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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 i

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
> 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). if you want to indicate that info, why not indicate that info, e.g. by marking current cases of unknown, known local transmission, imports only etc? the absolute count becomes irrelevant. why use a proxy to speculate about what you can say directly?
- hackinthebochs 7y ago
  But how do you do that in a way that is superior to simply just showing the numbers? The point of the OP was to argue that absolute numbers aren't meaningful in topological maps. But how do you communicate these more specific facts in topologically useful ways aside from just showing the numbers?

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

> 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). if you want to indicate that info, why not indicate that info, e.g. by marking current cases of unknown, known local transmission, imports only etc? the absolute count becomes irrelevant. why use a proxy to speculate about what you can say directly?

hackinthebochs 7y ago
But how do you do that in a way that is superior to simply just showing the numbers? The point of the OP was to argue that absolute numbers aren't meaningful in topological maps. But how do you communicate these more specific facts in topologically useful ways aside from just showing the numbers?