Problems With Bubble Plots

Your computer may be lying to you

Wed, 02/06/2019 - 12:03

With the click of your mouse you can turn a list of values into a bubble plot. No thought or effort is required. Simply sit back and let the software gods do the heavy lifting of transforming your list of numbers into a fancy graph. What could possibly go wrong?

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Comments

Submitted by Francois (not verified) on Wed, 02/06/2019 - 12:15

Thanks for yet another great article. The same criticism will be true of the Gapminder Motion Charts from Hans Rosling. The size in terms of the number of people(1 dimension) is presented by the size(2 dimensions) of the Bubble.

Great article on graphical distortions. I've also seen bin size adjustments on histograms to emphasize appearance of normal or non normal data. Maybe rules of bin size selection should be mentioned. Eg. Sturge’s rule.

Submitted by mkparker on Wed, 02/06/2019 - 15:18

Because people take computer processes for granted, they don't typically employ critical thinking skills with the results. This happens particularly with journalists who do not have a strong math or science background. 

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