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296 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-26-A simple semigraphic display


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Introduction: John Tukey wrote about semigraphic displays. I think his most famous effort in that area–the stem-and-leaf plot–is just horrible. But the general idea of viewing tables as graphs is good, and it’s been a success at least since the early 1900s, when Ramanujan famously intuited the behavior of the partition number by seeing a table of numbers and implicitly reading it as a graph on the logarithmic scale. To return to the present, Steve Roth sent me a link to these table/graphs that he made: Europe vs. US: Who’s Winning? and State Taxes and Prosperity, Revisited . He writes: I [Roth] find the layout with the red/black gives a simultaneous numeric and graphical representation of the situation, and condenses a lot of immediately apprehensible info into a small space. It also helps me avoid at least one axis of cherry-picking (periods), which I am as prone to as all humans are. Any thoughts welcome. In particular, do you think the average and count aggregates at the bot


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1 I think his most famous effort in that area–the stem-and-leaf plot–is just horrible. [sent-2, score-0.083]

2 But the general idea of viewing tables as graphs is good, and it’s been a success at least since the early 1900s, when Ramanujan famously intuited the behavior of the partition number by seeing a table of numbers and implicitly reading it as a graph on the logarithmic scale. [sent-3, score-1.251]

3 To return to the present, Steve Roth sent me a link to these table/graphs that he made: Europe vs. [sent-4, score-0.092]

4 He writes: I [Roth] find the layout with the red/black gives a simultaneous numeric and graphical representation of the situation, and condenses a lot of immediately apprehensible info into a small space. [sent-7, score-0.942]

5 It also helps me avoid at least one axis of cherry-picking (periods), which I am as prone to as all humans are. [sent-8, score-0.662]

6 In particular, do you think the average and count aggregates at the bottom of the second post are of any value? [sent-10, score-0.373]

7 I’m also wondering if your travels through econometrics have yielded the same sample-period-related frustration that I’ve felt with most of the research. [sent-11, score-0.741]

8 I do like these displays, which are designed for the sort of question I haven’t ever thought much about, which is how to be fair in displaying comparisons over time. [sent-12, score-0.307]


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