Friends don't let friends make bad graphs

Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by crazygringo on Sunday November 19, 2023 @07:43PM (#38340551)

On the one hand, this all seems pretty great.

On the other hand, I think a lot of these "bad graphs" are very intentionally chosen precisely in order to hide the small number of data points, or an underlying distribution that looks suspicious, etc.

So it's not so much "friends don't let friends", but more "when you see a graph that chooses to obfuscate rather than clarify, suspect it might be intentional".

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by taspeotis on Sunday November 19, 2023 @08:08PM (#38340779)

Yeah both AMD and NVIDIA churn out some pretty shit graphs year on year. But! Intentionally!

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by spartanatreyu on Sunday November 19, 2023 @08:15PM (#38340847)

Don't forget about Apple

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by shepherdjerred on Monday November 20, 2023 @03:03AM (#38344280)

I would consider myself an Apple apologist, but I can't defend their graphs. They're truly unforgivable.

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by rswskg on Monday November 20, 2023 @04:40AM (#38345491)

Got some examples?

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by mbreese on Monday November 20, 2023 @07:26AM (#38347005)

Any of their performance graphs… none of them include axis labels, so you never really know what they are comparing. All you can see is that the newer chip is “faster” or “more efficient” than something else. You just never know by how much.

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by ryukoposting on Monday November 20, 2023 @08:19AM (#38347542)

https://qz.com/138458/apple-is-either-terrible-at-designing-...

among others.

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by rswskg on Thursday November 23, 2023 @04:59AM (#38391173)

thank you!

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by earthscienceman on Sunday November 19, 2023 @07:59PM (#38340689)

Not that you're wrong but researchers are also deeply imperfect. They're rushed, they're given no time to actually improve their work, and the emphasis is entirely on 'good-enough' publications. The number of times I've been involved in a paper where the mentality wasn't "get it out the door, now" is.... zero times.

Plots often fail to clarify for the precise reason that clarification takes time and effort and those things are lacking in academia in spades. Are people intentionally hiding ugly details, definitely on occasion? But I don't think it's the primary source of such bad figures.

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by defrost on Sunday November 19, 2023 @08:11PM (#38340810)

All that you said with a heavy dash of good data visualisation is more of a skill and an artform than many people realise.

I've had four decades of crunching numbers in a variety of Engineering, Geophysics, and science applications with a hefty amount of public consulting on a variety of applications and of the large population of those good at gathering and recording data perhaps only 20% had that extra talent for good visualisation to convey meaning without distortion.

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by ctxc on Sunday November 19, 2023 @11:34PM (#38342293)

Are there resources or good examples you would recommend?

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by armagon on Monday November 20, 2023 @12:01AM (#38342478)

I liked "Signal: Understanding What Matters in a World of Noise" by Stephen Few.

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by mif on Monday November 20, 2023 @02:56AM (#38344194)

https://www.dataviz-inspiration.com/

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by frederikb on Monday November 20, 2023 @02:56AM (#38344204)

I really enjoyed Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic. The author really breaks down the individual elements of good/bad visualizations using case studies with lots of actionable advice. Highly recommended.

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by yummypaint on Monday November 20, 2023 @09:17AM (#38348525)

There is a book called. "how to lie with statistics" by Huff that should probably be required reading for everyone. It's not very technical and a pretty quick read

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by llamaInSouth on Sunday November 19, 2023 @11:54PM (#38342416)

lol, no... most people suck at laying out graphs... most cant even label axis

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by AmINotARobot on Monday November 20, 2023 @02:06AM (#38343729)

I for the life of me can not produce good graphs in Matlab... I use it so rarely that I forget all the syntax and when to us hold etc. So now I just export the data and plot it with python to annoyance of my pms...

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by llamaInSouth on Wednesday November 22, 2023 @11:59AM (#38381771)

I'd say Google it, but Google doesn't find much nowadays

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Re:Friends don't let friends make bad graphs by tgv on Monday November 20, 2023 @04:02AM (#38345122)

It definitely happens intentionally and unintentionally in psych literature, certainly the first one. Psych articles report p values over ANOVAs, and they blithely assume everything is normally distributed. For one group, there's absolutely no need to poke the sleeping dog. The other group simply has no idea. They shouldn't be doing research, but their training is lacking, and cheap PhDs aren't that easy to come by, so here we are.

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