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I'd venture further to say it's a perversion of "news" for a news site to be injecting garbage into the data for entertainment purposes.
by yankyou 10y ago
I'd venture further to say it's a perversion of "news" for a news site to be injecting garbage into the data for entertainment purposes.
- dj-wonk 10y agoYes, it is an abuse of our attention and a poor choice in information presentation. Who can we contact at NYT to complain?
- maxerickson 10y agohttp://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/contact-the-public-editor/ http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/contact-the-public-edi...
- dj-wonk 10y agoI doubt the public editor has much of an impact, if any, on the interactive tools.
- maxerickson 10y agoExamining whether the graphic is misleading is exactly in their purview. If they believe it is, they would be as likely as anyone to improve their standards and processes. Of course they aren't going to get it fixed tonight if that is what you are thinking.
- scrollaway 10y agoJitter is a visualization of uncertainty. Rather than display a range, it displays a needle moving within that range. It's only misleading developers, who will think that data is being streamed rather than fetched once. Other than that it's a clever (and yes, entertaining) way of displaying margins of error. Can I offer that, of all the things in news and dataviz to shit on, this isn't one of them? I mean, really, an "abuse of our attention" - what?
- yankyou 10y ago> Other than that it's a clever (and yes, entertaining) way of displaying margins of error. No dispute that it's clever and entertaining. These are undesirable qualities in a reliable source of information. Can you imagine reading a scientific journal in which the data narrative was deliberately engineered to keep you guessing until the conclusion? You would be right to raise eyebrows at a publication that is investing in your attention rather than its own accuracy. There's no dire consequence here, it's just slightly dystopian that US presidential elections are unapologetically leveraged as a vehicle for mass entertainment by the press itself.
- scrollaway 10y agoGood thing the NYT is not a scientific journal then? And that what you mentioned has nothing to do with jitter, either. HN is so incredibly cynical sometimes. How are "clever and entertaining" undesirable qualities in reliable source of information? The only requirement in a reliable source of information is reliability. "Entertaining" is very much a desirable quality if you actually want people to care about said reliable information. My argument is that jitter doesn't make it unreliable as it's simply a visualization of the uncertainty. So if it gets people interested and doesn't do it inaccurately, that's a win in my book. You would be right to raise eyebrows at a publication that is investing in your attention rather than its own accuracy Por que no los dos? One doesn't conflict with the other. > unapologetically leveraged as a vehicle for mass entertainment Sorry America, you turned those elections into mass entertainment all by yourself ;)
- twelvechairs 10y agoSure you could use it that way but even so its an unclear representation at best. At worst misleading and disingenuous. If this is the information beung conveyed why not just have a bell curve of probability or a certainty range?
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- the_duke 10y ago
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- bsg75 10y agoIts also an abuse of CPU, at least in Chrome.