3 ms·
One reason is that daily increases are very volatile/noisy. The standard way to handle this is to use n-day moving averages, but they have a time lag and are ha
by em500 7y ago
One reason is that daily increases are very volatile/noisy. The standard way to handle this is to use n-day moving averages, but they have a time lag and are harder to interpret.
Financial Times has the best graphical trackers I've seen. They used to show cumulative counts, but switched to 7-day moving averages of daily increases" recently.
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
I agree that displaying increases/growth rates are more informative overall, but it does take more time to understand the metrics. (Just compare the descriptions: "Total Deaths" vs "7-day moving average of daily increase in Total Deaths")
- computerphysics 7y agoNot really. Data for Spain can be perfectly used and fit without averages on daily increases => https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5622AQH1JmaVMs3mqQ/feedshare-shrink_2048_1536/0?e=1588809600&v=beta&t=oMud1mnDc9G9xn9wIa_nMQ83ZZzvVhS5y7ZMB9WMZWA https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5622AQH1JmaVMs3mqQ/f...
- em500 7y agoIt's unclear what that graph is supposed to show. It can't be cumulative cases (because there are days with decreases), but the scales are completely off if they're supposed to show daily increases/diffs (Spain certainly did not see daily increases anywhere near 100k in the past few days).
- jacobush 7y agoOn the other hand I don't understand how bad it is from looking at the graph with the easy to understand metric.