andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-736 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Ellen Barnes writes, in response to my paper and the associated discussion at JCGS , I [Barnes] am an industry statistician. I will agree that a table of numbers is essential in an academic publication. The readers want to be able to sit down with the numbers, and make sure they can replicate the results. However, graphics communicate faster – especially when a group of engineers are trying to figure out what is going on. Or, there are times when I have just a couple minutes to convey a complex relationship to a director or a vice-president. One example from this week: We are putting a new subsystem into some of our vehicles – using new technology. The technical specialist leading the project wanted to double check to make sure the system was working properly and finalize the calibration procedure. He mentioned a concern that was nagging him. I plotted his data in a matrix plot (a matrix of two dimensional scatter plots). We immediately keyed in on one plot that showed s
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1 Ellen Barnes writes, in response to my paper and the associated discussion at JCGS , I [Barnes] am an industry statistician. [sent-1, score-0.176]
2 I will agree that a table of numbers is essential in an academic publication. [sent-2, score-0.271]
3 The readers want to be able to sit down with the numbers, and make sure they can replicate the results. [sent-3, score-0.276]
4 However, graphics communicate faster – especially when a group of engineers are trying to figure out what is going on. [sent-4, score-0.464]
5 Or, there are times when I have just a couple minutes to convey a complex relationship to a director or a vice-president. [sent-5, score-0.388]
6 One example from this week: We are putting a new subsystem into some of our vehicles – using new technology. [sent-6, score-0.133]
7 The technical specialist leading the project wanted to double check to make sure the system was working properly and finalize the calibration procedure. [sent-7, score-0.682]
8 I plotted his data in a matrix plot (a matrix of two dimensional scatter plots). [sent-9, score-0.883]
9 We immediately keyed in on one plot that showed some anomalies. [sent-10, score-0.288]
10 That one graph was enough to get the supplier to reexamine its algorithm – with NO arguments. [sent-11, score-0.215]
11 My current chief engineer decided he wanted me in his organization because I could take complex data and put together graphics that would help him decide whether to redesign a system or not. [sent-12, score-1.094]
12 Any student going into industry needs to know the best graphical ways of presenting data, therefore I vote for both graphics and tables in papers. [sent-13, score-0.829]
13 This will force the professors to explore graphical options for presenting data and learn their strengths and weaknesses. [sent-14, score-0.901]
14 Barnes realized that my article was a joking over-the-top bit of overstatement but she wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to discuss some of the practical issues of tables and graphs. [sent-16, score-0.514]
15 Regular readers won’t be surprised to hear that I agree with her points. [sent-17, score-0.184]
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Introduction: Ellen Barnes writes, in response to my paper and the associated discussion at JCGS , I [Barnes] am an industry statistician. I will agree that a table of numbers is essential in an academic publication. The readers want to be able to sit down with the numbers, and make sure they can replicate the results. However, graphics communicate faster – especially when a group of engineers are trying to figure out what is going on. Or, there are times when I have just a couple minutes to convey a complex relationship to a director or a vice-president. One example from this week: We are putting a new subsystem into some of our vehicles – using new technology. The technical specialist leading the project wanted to double check to make sure the system was working properly and finalize the calibration procedure. He mentioned a concern that was nagging him. I plotted his data in a matrix plot (a matrix of two dimensional scatter plots). We immediately keyed in on one plot that showed s
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Introduction: To continue our discussion from last week , consider three positions regarding the display of information: (a) The traditional tabular approach. This is how most statisticians, econometricians, political scientists, sociologists, etc., seem to operate. They understand the appeal of a pretty graph, and they’re willing to plot some data as part of an exploratory data analysis, but they see their serious research as leading to numerical estimates, p-values, tables of numbers. These people might use a graph to illustrate their points but they don’t see them as necessary in their research. (b) Statistical graphics as performed by Howard Wainer, Bill Cleveland, Dianne Cook, etc. They–we–see graphics as central to the process of statistical modeling and data analysis and are interested in graphs (static and dynamic) that display every data point as transparently as possible. (c) Information visualization or infographics, as performed by graphics designers and statisticians who are
Introduction: Our discussion on data visualization continues. One one side are three statisticians–Antony Unwin, Kaiser Fung, and myself. We have been writing about the different goals served by information visualization and statistical graphics. On the other side are graphics experts (sorry for the imprecision, I don’t know exactly what these people do in their day jobs or how they are trained, and I don’t want to mislabel them) such as Robert Kosara and Jen Lowe , who seem a bit annoyed at how my colleagues and myself seem to follow the Tufte strategy of criticizing what we don’t understand. And on the third side are many (most?) academic statisticians, econometricians, etc., who don’t understand or respect graphs and seem to think of visualization as a toy that is unrelated to serious science or statistics. I’m not so interested in the third group right now–I tried to communicate with them in my big articles from 2003 and 2004 )–but I am concerned that our dialogue with the graphic
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Introduction: After our recent discussion of semigraphic displays, Jay Ulfelder sent along a semigraphic table from his recent book. He notes, “When countries are the units of analysis, it’s nice that you can use three-letter codes, so all the proper names have the same visual weight.” Ultimately I think that graphs win over tables for display. However in our work we spend a lot of time looking at raw data, often simply to understand what data we have. This use of tables has, I think, been forgotten in the statistical graphics literature. So I’d like to refocus the eternal tables vs. graphs discussion. If the goal is to present information, comparisons, relationships, models, data, etc etc, graphs win. Forget about tables. But . . . when you’re looking at your data, it can often help to see the raw numbers. Once you’re looking at numbers, it makes sense to organize them. Even a displayed matrix in R is a form of table, after all. And once you’re making a table, it can be sensible to
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Introduction: Ellen Barnes writes, in response to my paper and the associated discussion at JCGS , I [Barnes] am an industry statistician. I will agree that a table of numbers is essential in an academic publication. The readers want to be able to sit down with the numbers, and make sure they can replicate the results. However, graphics communicate faster – especially when a group of engineers are trying to figure out what is going on. Or, there are times when I have just a couple minutes to convey a complex relationship to a director or a vice-president. One example from this week: We are putting a new subsystem into some of our vehicles – using new technology. The technical specialist leading the project wanted to double check to make sure the system was working properly and finalize the calibration procedure. He mentioned a concern that was nagging him. I plotted his data in a matrix plot (a matrix of two dimensional scatter plots). We immediately keyed in on one plot that showed s
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Introduction: After our recent discussion of semigraphic displays, Jay Ulfelder sent along a semigraphic table from his recent book. He notes, “When countries are the units of analysis, it’s nice that you can use three-letter codes, so all the proper names have the same visual weight.” Ultimately I think that graphs win over tables for display. However in our work we spend a lot of time looking at raw data, often simply to understand what data we have. This use of tables has, I think, been forgotten in the statistical graphics literature. So I’d like to refocus the eternal tables vs. graphs discussion. If the goal is to present information, comparisons, relationships, models, data, etc etc, graphs win. Forget about tables. But . . . when you’re looking at your data, it can often help to see the raw numbers. Once you’re looking at numbers, it makes sense to organize them. Even a displayed matrix in R is a form of table, after all. And once you’re making a table, it can be sensible to
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Introduction: Alberto Cairo tells a fascinating story about John Snow, H. W. Acland, and the Mythmaking Problem: Every human community—nations, ethnic and cultural groups, professional guilds—inevitably raises a few of its members to the status of heroes and weaves myths around them. . . . The visual display of information is no stranger to heroes and myth. In fact, being a set of disciplines with a relatively small amount of practitioners and researchers, it has generated a staggering number of heroes, perhaps as a morale-enhancing mechanism. Most of us have heard of the wonders of William Playfair’s Commercial and Political Atlas, Florence Nightingale’s coxcomb charts, Charles Joseph Minard’s Napoleon’s march diagram, and Henry Beck’s 1933 redesign of the London Underground map. . . . Cairo’s goal, I think, is not to disparage these great pioneers of graphics but rather to put their work in perspective, recognizing the work of their excellent contemporaries. I would like to echo Cairo’
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