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Took me a moment to get that heatmap. An axis labelled 1-10 from pale to red seemed absurd to me at first. "On a scale from-one-to-ten, how expensive are houses
by boerseth 2y ago
Took me a moment to get that heatmap. An axis labelled 1-10 from pale to red seemed absurd to me at first. "On a scale from-one-to-ten, how expensive are houses?"
It is a shame how vulgarization of science and statistics seems to necessitate a simplification of the data set to the point where its usefulness becomes debatable. It always seems to me like I want access to the axes that they've simplified away down to just a mean or an average. I get that presenting data is hard, but if I'm left more puzzled than informed at the end, what have you really presented to me?
In this case, I wish I could see the distribution of salaries through time and by location, as well as that of home prices. There ought to be a more interesting metric available than simply calculating the average of either and dividing the two.
- vasco 2y agoThe source: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/son-2024-price-to-income-map https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/son-2024-price-to-income-map Explaining price to income ratio (the 1 to 10): https://data.oecd.org/price/housing-prices.htm https://data.oecd.org/price/housing-prices.htm
- boerseth 2y agoI was eager to see the data, but exporting from the first source only gives the same data shown in the article, although in a spreadsheet. The explanations in your second link are more like definitions than justifications for why this and those boiled down quantities are worth talking about.
- vasco 2y agoI'm not trying to excuse them, I just had similar questions and googled around a bit and those looked interesting to save the next person a couple minutes! I also shamelessly sorta use my own HN comments as a brain dump sometimes for myself in the future.