Archive for bad graph
on the Internet nobody knows you are an old dog
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags bad graph, cell, dog, extrapolation, jabg, on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog, Science News on July 25, 2020 by xi'an
another terrible graph
Posted in Kids with tags bad graph, Bureau of Labor, confinement, coronavirus epidemics, inequalities, USA, work from home on April 30, 2020 by xi'an
ideal COVID¹⁹ chart
Posted in Statistics with tags bad graph, coronavirus epidemics, COVID-19, xkcd on April 16, 2020 by xi'an
absurd graph [if relevant warning]
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Wines with tags alcohol, bad graph, David Spiegelhalter, graphics, health care, risk, The Guardian, The Lancet on August 28, 2018 by xi'an
A pretty silly graph opposing countries with an overwhelming majority of non-Muslims and countries with an overwhelming majority of Muslims in terms of alcohol consumption. Surprise, surprise! And not incorporating the average amount or anything useful… In a Guardian article reporting on a Lancet paper about the lack of health benefit from drinking even moderate amounts of alcohol. Although, as pointed out by David Spiegelhalter at the bottom of the article, an increased risk of 0.5% associated with one unit of alcohol a day [half a pint] , as opposed to 7% for two units [a pint!], should not get occasional drinkers too worried: “Come to think of it, there is no safe level of living, but nobody would recommend abstention.”
bad graphics and poor statistics
Posted in Statistics with tags airlines, awful graphs, bad graph, giant rabbit, in-flight deaths, pets, The Guardian, travel deaths, US airlines on February 21, 2018 by xi'an
Reading through The Guardian website, I came across this terrible graphic about US airlines 2016 comparison for killing pests pets they carry. Beyond the gross imprecision resulting from resorting to a (gross) dead dog scale to report integers, the impression of Hawaiian Airlines having a beef with pets is just misleading: there were three animal deaths on this company for that year. And nine on United Airlines (including the late giant rabbit). The law of small numbers in action! Computing a basic p-value (!) based on a Poisson approximation (the most pet friendly distribution) does not even exclude Hawaiian Airlines. Without even considering the possibility that, among the half-million plus pets travelling on US airlines in 2016, some would have died anyway but it happened during a flight. (As a comparison, there are “between 114 and 360 medical” in-flight [human] deaths per year. For it’s worth.) The scariest part of The Guardian article [beyond the reliance on terrible graphs!] is the call to end up pets travelling as cargo, meaning they would join their owner in the cabin. As if stag and hen [parties] were not enough of a travelling nuisance..!
