on the less impressive end of the spectrum: https://twitter.com/hrtbps/status/455966095384793088
― Merdeyeux, Thursday, 17 April 2014 20:26 (ten years ago) link
omg
― purposely lend impetus to my HOOS (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 17 April 2014 21:08 (ten years ago) link
btw this seems like a good thread for horace "chartboy" dediu's new show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab7yxU7lNHg
― purposely lend impetus to my HOOS (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 17 April 2014 21:09 (ten years ago) link
fuck everything btw
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BldfNyeIYAA7lAl.jpg
― purposely lend impetus to my HOOS (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, 17 April 2014 23:34 (ten years ago) link
just died @ that gun deaths graph. add it to the data pool.
― smhphony orchestra (crüt), Friday, 18 April 2014 13:18 (ten years ago) link
you may want to sit down for this. i've uncovered something disturbing, something that could have a substantial effect on the way that you'll experience ILX. and somehow, it all has to do with ME. what are the chances holy shit, this is exciting.
i was doing my routine morning data analysis on my thread posting history when i decided to "dig deeper" into the data and create some "data visualizations", aka charts. here's a line graph showing the number of threads i've posted over my many years on ilx (many more years than any other ilx poster):
http://i.imgur.com/ibvmKV5.png
note that for 2014 i took the number of threads i created in the first 6 months (15) and extrapolated that to an estimated 30 new threads for the entire year.
let's "dig deep" into the data and create a linear trendline:
http://i.imgur.com/3gZwbIn.png
science projects that i'll post 29 new threads in 2015. but let's dig deep into the data and see what polynomial theory has to say:
http://i.imgur.com/LdSxdPh.png
the second order of polyscience suggests that my output will decline to a similar degree, to around 28 threads in 2015. but what if we "dig deep" into the data and take it to the 3rd order? what then?
http://i.imgur.com/nzbC5sK.png
3rd order science appears to be making a surprising prediction: 50 new threads in 2015. on the way to the store to buy arthritis ointment i program my computer to take it to the next level and take the polynomial theory to the 4th order:
http://i.imgur.com/vh1X8oi.png
42 is the prediction for 2015. finding: polynomial theory appears to create trendlines that are different depending on the order. let's dig deep and reach for the 5th polynomial order:
http://i.imgur.com/J7XMQP1.png
astonishing: the deeper you dig into the data, the fewer answers you come up with. the theoretical 5th order projection is 16 new threads created in 2015. the farther i look with my mind, the smaller i become, in terms of my ILX presence. i am disturbed but also confused and angry at science, which appears to contradict itself. as i gather the kindling to make the bonfire that will burn my books of science and polynomial theory, i remember that there is one more order that can be achieved with the proper formula: "the sixth order of polynomial order".
again, you may want to sit down for this.
knowing what was to come, i sat down and produced this:
http://i.imgur.com/ticccQk.png
i will create over 500 threads in 2015. as this is the latest data i have obtained, i know that this projection is the most accurate. i am preparing to create 1.37 threads a day in 2015, all in tribute to science and order.
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 15:33 (ten years ago) link
this polynomial theory is blowing my gourd
― chikungunya manatee (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 9 July 2014 15:43 (ten years ago) link
i did not have to scroll down to know who posted this
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:03 (ten years ago) link
it is true that there is really only one authority in polynomial theory on this board
― chikungunya manatee (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:12 (ten years ago) link
seriously though i don't really understand why the 6th order trendline is so crazy compared to the lower orders.
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:28 (ten years ago) link
i like to call this paradox the "next frontier in theoretical polyscience"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfitting
― caek, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:29 (ten years ago) link
hmmm, yes that's an interesting theory
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:39 (ten years ago) link
but it's not the one you subscribe to, professor malone?
― chikungunya manatee (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:47 (ten years ago) link
i prefer to let the mysteries of science marinate in the sea of self-collected data for a while - eventually, the answers always rise to the top
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:49 (ten years ago) link
it would be fun to fake your way onto rightwing AM radio as a "science expert"
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:50 (ten years ago) link
I've been making graphs for my company for the past year or so, and with no formal training, I still feel like this newspaper is publishing the rantings of a crazy person.
For example, we used to measure net absorption rates in regular bar form, like this:
http://assets.inarkansas.com/32941/net-absorption-by-quarter.jpg
Net absorption is such a weird stat anyway - Basically how much square footage was gained or lost in a market between two quarters. It can be positive or negative. And if a shopping mall opens or a factory closes, the numbers can vary widely.
So I wanted to show how big of a difference those numbers can be sometimes and came up with this:
http://assets.inarkansas.com/49176/central-arkansas-industrial-real-estate-vacancy-553.jpg
The marks we would've used in bar formats are still there, but I represented the rates by size. The time used above was a good one since everything was positive, but if any were negative, I could've still used the space I've got and just put the zero line in the middle. Like this:
http://assets.inarkansas.com/49054/vacancy-rate-remains-flat-781.jpg
Are those too busy? Do they make any sense? What changes would you make?
I get a little lost in the woods some afternoons I'm putting these together. No one's complained yet, but hell, who knows if anyone's even looking.
― pplains, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 17:52 (ten years ago) link
Different sized circles are usually bad for data visualization, because they're easy to mess up and can be difficult to interpret.http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2011/01/for-data-visualization-circles-dont-cut-it.html And also see the discussion in Nathan Yau's book Visualize This. But circles might be pretty good to use if you're using them to represent area (or change in area) like you are. Just make sure the circles actually represent area, and you're not accidentally sizing them by radius or diameter.
― Dan I., Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:39 (ten years ago) link
Hm, I think using both circle size and the Y axis to represent net absorption might be bad, because it makes the circle sizes more difficult to compare. If you want to represent net absorption by circle size, consider taking out the Y axis and just setting all the circles on the same horizontal line.
― Dan I., Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:42 (ten years ago) link
pplains, are you trying to demonstrate that the changes are mostly capricious/random or just that they can vary widely year-to-year? from looking at these i'd guess that something happened in 2013 4Q that lead to a huge boom in both commercial + industrial sectors?
― Mordy, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:45 (ten years ago) link
I also think different sized squares would be a more easily interpretable indicator of area, because people aren't as good at perceiving that the outer parts of a circle contain more area (the famous "biggest pizza = best deal" thing)
― Dan I., Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:46 (ten years ago) link
(Also, Dr. Malone, get one information criterion!)
― Dan I., Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:47 (ten years ago) link
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/02/26/282132576/74-476-reasons-you-should-always-get-the-bigger-pizza
― Dan I., Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:48 (ten years ago) link
one problem with the circles (as used above) is that it can difficult to tell at a glance what the actual quantities are - is it the point at the middle of the circle? at the top edge? bottom edge? reasonable people could come to different conclusions, i think. it's really impossible to tell without labeling each of the individual circles, which you've done. but if you have to label each of the individual circles in order to communicate the quantities, then there's probably a better way to do it. also, Dan I otm about area vs radius vs diameter
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:49 (ten years ago) link
And especially since some of the values are negative, it's better to just stick with the bar chart in your first image. Really feel like the human brain might have a problem interpreting the size of a thing on a plot as actually being the magnitude of the reduction in that thing.
― Dan I., Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:55 (ten years ago) link
you could implement a new system where you walk around the office giving tootsie rolls for every 1000 sq. ft. of net office space gained that quarter. if your company loses office space, then you take away an item on the person's desk for every 1000 sq. ft. lost. this simultaneously acts as an incentive system
― Karl Malone, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 18:58 (ten years ago) link
You could change the unit from square feet to "# of john's houses" to point out to everyone how small your rival john's house is.
― chikungunya manatee (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:03 (ten years ago) link
at the least there is a problem with the x positions of the circles. they are not regularly spaced in the x direction. is that real?
those plots are very hard to interpret imo. estimating areas of circles is something we are always terrible at. but in this case it's even harder because what you're trying to get across is conceptually complicated, and the range of point sizes you're using is colossal.
the bar chart in the first example is much clearer. i would stick with that tbh. if you want to explicitly include both the absolute value of SF and the change (i.e. net absorption) (which i don't think you need to, it's implicit, unless i've misunderstood net absorption), i would use two bar graph panels, one above the other, sharing an x axis
x = timey1 = square feety2 = net absorption
― caek, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:05 (ten years ago) link
These are really helpful, I mean it.
The circles do represent area, flat two-dimensional area. This is why I wanted to run with showing the different sizes.
I'm showing how little I know about algebra by not quite understanding the difference between diameter and area. I read the blog about the State of the Union address and didn't quite get what the fuss was about.
(Though if it means anything, I understand why there was a fuss and why I would want to avoid making that mistake even if I'm not sure what the mistake was. How's that for clarity?)
I based the circles off of the area in this way: I somehow did the calculations of what the square root of 448,568 would be. I then put those x,y coordinates into the "exact ratio" field of the circle selection tool, so it would be perfect circle. Then I based the ratios of the other circles on that. Is this voodoo economics?
And fwiw, these graphs never appeared together. Even if they weren't part of the slide, it would still bug me that the circles would be the same size despite one being 448K and the other being -64K.
then there's probably a better way to do it.
oh most indeed.
― pplains, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:09 (ten years ago) link
The x positions, the number of square feet, are accurately pinpointed by the white squares. If it was a bar graph, the bars would rise and fall exactly to those spots on the graph.
The circles are illustrations only.
― pplains, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:11 (ten years ago) link
I have no idea if I answered that question or not.
― pplains, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:12 (ten years ago) link
standard advice is don't use the size or area of symbols on the page to represent any important data, because people can't "read" it
your first bar chart has the same data in it and is familiar and easy to read.
― caek, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:13 (ten years ago) link
why aren't the centres of the circles on the white points?
― caek, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:14 (ten years ago) link
oh wait. i had totally been misreading your graphs. they are very confusing!
my points still stand. i think you need to get rid of the circles.
― caek, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:16 (ten years ago) link
this is not a minor thing. it's a huge flaw in the approach.
if area of the circle represents the data, and you have positive and negative data, then negative changes should have circles with negative areas. this is not possible.
― caek, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:19 (ten years ago) link
things you can't do when you have positive and negative data:
log plotsarea plots
― caek, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:21 (ten years ago) link
you could compare the area to the peak area, which you could show for scale, and never go negative. but you shouldn't.
― chikungunya manatee (Sufjan Grafton), Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:21 (ten years ago) link
I'm starting to think I'm bombing on these.
Another stat that I thought wasn't being illustrated correctly has to do with unemployment figures. Usually, those are in bar graph form from month to month or by region, pretty straight forward.
http://assets.inarkansas.com/47290/arkansas-unemployment-rate-2013-4q-general.jpg
But there's a weird anomaly that happens from month to month where the number of jobs/number of people changes. So you might have a month where there are more people working, but the unemployment rate goes up the number of jobs go up too.
I did my circle thing again and second-guessed later that I should've made the red unemployed figure go around the circumference of the blue ball so that it would match the green total ball.
But now, I feel like I should be working for Fox News or the Enquirer.
http://assets.inarkansas.com/51231/may-2014-employment-in-arkansas.jpg
― pplains, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:23 (ten years ago) link
bar graphs aren't really performing any role when you can't visually tell the difference between them
― iatee, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:25 (ten years ago) link
like it is a fox news graph in a sense "look the economy hasn't changed at all!!"
― iatee, Wednesday, 9 July 2014 19:26 (ten years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz2mmM-kN1I
― 龜, Wednesday, 29 April 2015 11:33 (nine years ago) link
http://gecon.yale.edu/
cool data set with economic output on a 1 degree latitude by 1 degree longitude
http://oi58.tinypic.com/24en8kh.jpghttp://oi58.tinypic.com/inxu87.jpghttp://oi60.tinypic.com/k13skz.jpg
― flopson, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 03:24 (nine years ago) link
grid
― flopson, Tuesday, 1 September 2015 03:25 (nine years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6PtWdLXsAAgIht.jpg
― mookieproof, Saturday, 11 May 2019 03:46 (five years ago) link
- "Maybe we should get another usual suspect in the lineup besides the Indian woman."
- "But from where? Estonia? Venezuela? There aren't many other countries to choose from!"
― pplains, Saturday, 11 May 2019 03:55 (five years ago) link
Look at the difference between 5’4” and 5’5” on the y-axis, compares to between 5’0” and 5’1”
― these are not all of the possible side effects (Karl Malone), Saturday, 11 May 2019 04:02 (five years ago) link
Other than that, great chart design!!
― these are not all of the possible side effects (Karl Malone), Saturday, 11 May 2019 04:03 (five years ago) link
The Latvian woman is huge and the woman from India is tiny to visually convey the fact that Latvia has a female population at least ten times larger than the female population of India.
― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, 11 May 2019 05:00 (five years ago) link
The sum of the height of all the Indian women will be more though. Is there a graph of that?
― StanM, Saturday, 11 May 2019 05:25 (five years ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7K2CkyXkAAEJKT.jpg
― mookieproof, Thursday, 23 May 2019 20:05 (five years ago) link