5 ms·

I can see why people might be mislead, but absolute value is a very understandable metric. If you start moving to things like per-capita, i actually think that

by platz 7y ago

I can see why people might be mislead, but absolute value is a very understandable metric. If you start moving to things like per-capita, i actually think that has the potential to be more confusing for more numbers of people. so yes, absolute values will be highly correlated with population, but again it just depends on what you really want to highlight and communicate Maybe you really do want the absolute value.

danso 7y ago
I guess I'm having a hard time thinking of reasons why absolute value is more important than rate, especially in this scenario, when we're measuring the impact of an infectious disease that spreads person-to-person. I suppose in the hypothetical situation, where there are 10,000 cases in Wyoming and 10,000 cases in New Jersey. A choropleth map by rate would shade Wyoming 15-18 times darker than New Jersey. And this would obfuscate the likely reality that 10,000 cases in New Jersey is imminently a far bigger story – because N.J. is not only 15-18 times more populous, but ~25 times more dense. (The fact that Wyoming is ~15x bigger by land mass would make the issue worse, in terms of visual distraction) But I'm not sure how shading this by absolute totals – in which case, Wyoming and N.J. would be the same shade – would provide significantly more value? Sure, N.J.'s situation wouldn't be effectively invisible in the totals map, compared to the rates map. But now we have to imagine a scenario in which a person-to-person virus managed to sicken so many people (proportionally speaking) in such a large rural state compared to an extremely urban state. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which we don't want to focus attention on Wyoming. For 10,000 Wyoming people to be infected – and only 10,000 affected in New Jersey – would almost certainly mean that the infection's original epicenter is Wyoming, and that someone from Wyoming had direct contact via travel with a New Jersey resident, (especially if Wyoming and N.J. are outliers in terms of absolute totals by state).
- platz 7y ago
  I'm not saying absolute is necessarily better than rate. I'm saying that it's a choice that highlights different information. there is no objective right answer, and it's about intent of the communicator. in this case, rate may very well be what the intent needs to be.
luckylion 7y ago
> Maybe you really do want the absolute value. What for though? What can you tell from that value, other than the value itself? You cannot tell whether it's common or rare, you cannot tell the risk of anyone in a certain area to be affected, you will have a hard time showing trends because people will react to the phenomena and avoid a certain high-risk area which will then result in fewer cases in that area.
- hackinthebochs 7y ago
  When the presence of the contagion is the risk, absolute numbers communicate a lot. Relative counts are less meaningful right now. The majority of meaningful information received from such a chart right now is the presence or absence of the virus. Secondary is the number of cases to indicate the stage of spread (e.g. 1 suggests maybe an outlier, 2-10 suggests early stages of contact spreading, etc). Communicating information with an inherently exponential growth rate is just entirely different beast.
  - danso 7y ago
    Why is "has province reported any cases?" the most meaningful information? Ignoring the current reality of every province having reported cases since January, a simple boolean shading would obfuscate nearly every vital insight realistically conceivable. If it were the case that 3 months after the Hubei outbreak, Hubei had 100,000 reported cases, and all bordering provinces had 1-100, that is an extremely important distinction to make when assessing the effectiveness of containment policies (and/or the trustworthiness of official government numbers).
    - hackinthebochs 7y ago
      I agree with what you're saying about reporting cases in China. My point was in the context of reporting elsewhere in the world where most areas have zero cases and so having cases or not is the most important information, followed by the number of cases. I should have been clearer.
  - ferzul 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
maxerickson 7y ago
You are arguing a digression. The argument isn't that you never want to present absolute values. The argument is that you never want to present absolute values on a choropleth map, explicitly because it always obfuscates the data in a way that is misleading. The data in question should probably be in a table, if the idea is to be able to compare Hubei Province to the others. The bar chart makes the difference very clear, but it also makes it difficult to interpret the data for the other provinces.

by platz 7y ago

danso 7y ago

I guess I'm having a hard time thinking of reasons why absolute value is more important than rate, especially in this scenario, when we're measuring the impact of an infectious disease that spreads person-to-person. I suppose in the hypothetical situation, where there are 10,000 cases in Wyoming and 10,000 cases in New Jersey. A choropleth map by rate would shade Wyoming 15-18 times darker than New Jersey. And this would obfuscate the likely reality that 10,000 cases in New Jersey is imminently a far bigger story – because N.J. is not only 15-18 times more populous, but ~25 times more dense. (The fact that Wyoming is ~15x bigger by land mass would make the issue worse, in terms of visual distraction) But I'm not sure how shading this by absolute totals – in which case, Wyoming and N.J. would be the same shade – would provide significantly more value? Sure, N.J.'s situation wouldn't be effectively invisible in the totals map, compared to the rates map. But now we have to imagine a scenario in which a person-to-person virus managed to sicken so many people (proportionally speaking) in such a large rural state compared to an extremely urban state. It's very hard to imagine a scenario in which we don't want to focus attention on Wyoming. For 10,000 Wyoming people to be infected – and only 10,000 affected in New Jersey – would almost certainly mean that the infection's original epicenter is Wyoming, and that someone from Wyoming had direct contact via travel with a New Jersey resident, (especially if Wyoming and N.J. are outliers in terms of absolute totals by state).

platz 7y ago
I'm not saying absolute is necessarily better than rate. I'm saying that it's a choice that highlights different information. there is no objective right answer, and it's about intent of the communicator. in this case, rate may very well be what the intent needs to be.

luckylion 7y ago

> Maybe you really do want the absolute value. What for though? What can you tell from that value, other than the value itself? You cannot tell whether it's common or rare, you cannot tell the risk of anyone in a certain area to be affected, you will have a hard time showing trends because people will react to the phenomena and avoid a certain high-risk area which will then result in fewer cases in that area.

hackinthebochs 7y ago
When the presence of the contagion is the risk, absolute numbers communicate a lot. Relative counts are less meaningful right now. The majority of meaningful information received from such a chart right now is the presence or absence of the virus. Secondary is the number of cases to indicate the stage of spread (e.g. 1 suggests maybe an outlier, 2-10 suggests early stages of contact spreading, etc). Communicating information with an inherently exponential growth rate is just entirely different beast.
- danso 7y ago
  Why is "has province reported any cases?" the most meaningful information? Ignoring the current reality of every province having reported cases since January, a simple boolean shading would obfuscate nearly every vital insight realistically conceivable. If it were the case that 3 months after the Hubei outbreak, Hubei had 100,000 reported cases, and all bordering provinces had 1-100, that is an extremely important distinction to make when assessing the effectiveness of containment policies (and/or the trustworthiness of official government numbers).
  - hackinthebochs 7y ago
    I agree with what you're saying about reporting cases in China. My point was in the context of reporting elsewhere in the world where most areas have zero cases and so having cases or not is the most important information, followed by the number of cases. I should have been clearer.
- ferzul 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

maxerickson 7y ago

You are arguing a digression. The argument isn't that you never want to present absolute values. The argument is that you never want to present absolute values on a choropleth map, explicitly because it always obfuscates the data in a way that is misleading. The data in question should probably be in a table, if the idea is to be able to compare Hubei Province to the others. The bar chart makes the difference very clear, but it also makes it difficult to interpret the data for the other provinces.