best science graphic of the week?!

another terrible graph

Le Monde illustrated an article about discriminations against women with this graph which gives the number of men for 100 women per continent. This is a fairly poor graph, fit for one of Tufte’s counterexamples, as the bars are truncated at 85, make little sense as they do not convey the time dimension, are dwarfed by the legend on the left that is not of the same colors, and also miss the population dimension, which makes the title inappropriate since the graph does not show why there are more men than women on the planet, even if the large percentage of the population of Asia in the World’s population hints at the result.

deaths on Mont Maudit (and bad graph)

A large avalanche on one of the most classical routes to the summit of Mont Blanc early yesterday morning alas caught several groups climbing towards Mont Blanc and most sadly killed nine of them, including the BMC former secretary Roger Payne. It was triggered by a sérac fall above the route, always a possibility in this area whose name says it all… At a very minor level, compared with those tragic deaths, let me point out that The Guardian reported on this tragic accident with the following “bad graph”, which apparently gives the number of deaths on each accident (month?) with no consideration for the time (first axis). In other words, the barplot is missing all the zeroes. (It also missed the group of two who died from exhaustion in the Jorasses last November…)

This is not the right post to elaborate on the announcement that the next MCM’ski conference will take place in Chamonix, presumably on January 6-8, 2014. I am currently waiting for a formal proposal from the conference bureau in Chamonix… Nor on the incoming creation of a computational Bayes (BayesComp) ISBA section [if enough ISBA members support this creation].