For the past year or so genetic scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York have been collaborating with a specialist from another universe: Daniel Kohn, a Brooklyn-based painter and conceptual artist. Mr. Kohn has no training in computers or genetics, and he’s not there to conduct art therapy classes. His role is to help the scientists with a signature 21st-century problem:...
Interesting website of data visualizations
Why simple statistics can be so very misleading
Anscombe’s quartet was mentioned in a discussion on the Political Methodology listserv, as to what journalists need to know to stop looking like idiots when they report on social science research: Counter to your intuition, all four sets of data have the exact same descriptive and bivariate statistics: Property Value Mean of x in each case 9 (exact) Sample variance of x in each case 11...
Number of drinks per week in the U.S., annals of the top ten percent
The top 10 percent of American drinkers – 24 million adults over age 18 – consume, on average, 74 alcoholic drinks per week. That works out to a little more than four-and-a-half 750 ml bottles of Jack Daniels, 18 bottles of wine, or three 24-can cases of beer. In one week.
No comment on where I fall on this distribution.
NSA crimes against graphic design
The first chart is an example of people using 3D bar charts because they think their data are too boring and need dressing up. If that’s the case, delete the chart!
Short guide to graphics and data
Schwabish, Jonathan A. 2014. “An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(1): 209-34. Abstract: Once upon a time, a picture was worth a thousand words. But with online news, blogs, and social media, a good picture can now be worth so much more. Economists who want to disseminate their research, both inside and outside the seminar room, should...