andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1775 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: In his review in 1938 of Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data , by H. Gray Funkhauser, for The Economic Journal , the great economist writes: Perhaps the most striking outcome of Mr. Funkhouser’s researches is the fact of the very slow progress which graphical methods made until quite recently. . . . In the first fifty volumes of the Statistical Journal, 1837-87, only fourteen graphs are printed altogether. It is surprising to be told that Laplace never drew a graph of the normal law of error . . . Edgeworth made no use of statistical charts as distinct from mathematical diagrams. Apart from Quetelet and Jevons, the most important influences were probably those of Galton and of Mulhall’s Dictionary, first published in 1884. Galton was indeed following his father and grandfather in this field, but his pioneer work was mainly restricted to meteorological maps, and he did not contribute to the development of the graphical representation of ec
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1 Gray Funkhauser, for The Economic Journal , the great economist writes: Perhaps the most striking outcome of Mr. [sent-2, score-0.082]
2 Funkhouser’s researches is the fact of the very slow progress which graphical methods made until quite recently. [sent-3, score-0.457]
3 In the first fifty volumes of the Statistical Journal, 1837-87, only fourteen graphs are printed altogether. [sent-7, score-0.623]
4 It is surprising to be told that Laplace never drew a graph of the normal law of error . [sent-8, score-0.169]
5 Edgeworth made no use of statistical charts as distinct from mathematical diagrams. [sent-11, score-0.378]
6 Apart from Quetelet and Jevons, the most important influences were probably those of Galton and of Mulhall’s Dictionary, first published in 1884. [sent-12, score-0.174]
7 Galton was indeed following his father and grandfather in this field, but his pioneer work was mainly restricted to meteorological maps, and he did not contribute to the development of the graphical representation of economic statistics. [sent-13, score-1.27]
8 Funkhouser has made an extremely interesting and valuable contribution to the history of statistical method. [sent-16, score-0.35]
9 I wish, however, that he could have added a warning, supported by horrid examples, of the evils of the graphical method unsupported by tables of figures. [sent-17, score-0.929]
10 Both for accurate understanding, and particularly to facilitate the use of the same material by other people, it is essential that graphs should not be published by themselves, but only when supported by the tables which lead up to them. [sent-18, score-0.843]
11 It would be an exceedingly good rule to forbid in any scientific periodical the publication of graphs unsupported by tables. [sent-19, score-1.098]
12 I’m ok with that—if they also forbid the publication of all tables unsupported by graphs. [sent-20, score-0.867]
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Introduction: In his review in 1938 of Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data , by H. Gray Funkhauser, for The Economic Journal , the great economist writes: Perhaps the most striking outcome of Mr. Funkhouser’s researches is the fact of the very slow progress which graphical methods made until quite recently. . . . In the first fifty volumes of the Statistical Journal, 1837-87, only fourteen graphs are printed altogether. It is surprising to be told that Laplace never drew a graph of the normal law of error . . . Edgeworth made no use of statistical charts as distinct from mathematical diagrams. Apart from Quetelet and Jevons, the most important influences were probably those of Galton and of Mulhall’s Dictionary, first published in 1884. Galton was indeed following his father and grandfather in this field, but his pioneer work was mainly restricted to meteorological maps, and he did not contribute to the development of the graphical representation of ec
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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
Introduction: I continue to struggle to convey my thoughts on statistical graphics so I’ll try another approach, this time giving my own story. For newcomers to this discussion: the background is that Antony Unwin and I wrote an article on the different goals embodied in information visualization and statistical graphics, but I have difficulty communicating on this point with the infovis people. Maybe if I tell my own story, and then they tell their stories, this will point a way forward to a more constructive discussion. So here goes. I majored in physics in college and I worked in a couple of research labs during the summer. Physicists graph everything. I did most of my plotting on graph paper–this continued through my second year of grad school–and became expert at putting points at 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, and 4/5 between the x and y grid lines. In grad school in statistics, I continued my physics habits and graphed everything I could. I did notice, though, that the faculty and the other
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Introduction: Curt Yeske pointed me to this . Wow–these graphs are really hard to read! The old me would’ve said that each of these graphs would be better replaced by a dotplot (or, better still, a series of lineplots showing time trends). The new me would still like the dotplots and lineplots, but I’d say it’s fine to have the eye-grabbing but hard-to-read graphs as is, and then to have the more informative statistical graphics underneath, as it were. The idea is, you’d click on the pretty but hard-to-read “infovis” graphs, and this would then reveal informative “full Cleveland” graphs. And then if you click again you’d get a spreadsheet with the raw numbers. That I’d like to see, as a new model for graphical presentation.
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Introduction: For background, you can start by reading my recent article, Is It Possible to Be an Ethicist Without Being Mean to People? and then a blog post, Quality over Quantity , by John Cook, who writes: At one point [Ed] Tufte spoke more generally and more personally about pursuing quality over quantity. He said most papers are not worth reading and that he learned early on to concentrate on the great papers, maybe one in 500, that are worth reading and rereading rather than trying to “keep up with the literature.” He also explained how over time he has concentrated more on showcasing excellent work than on criticizing bad work. You can see this in the progression from his first book to his latest. (Criticizing bad work is important too, but you’ll have to read his early books to find more of that. He won’t spend as much time talking about it in his course.) That reminded me of Jesse Robbins’ line: “Don’t fight stupid. You are better than that. Make more awesome.” This made me stop an
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Introduction: In his review in 1938 of Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data , by H. Gray Funkhauser, for The Economic Journal , the great economist writes: Perhaps the most striking outcome of Mr. Funkhouser’s researches is the fact of the very slow progress which graphical methods made until quite recently. . . . In the first fifty volumes of the Statistical Journal, 1837-87, only fourteen graphs are printed altogether. It is surprising to be told that Laplace never drew a graph of the normal law of error . . . Edgeworth made no use of statistical charts as distinct from mathematical diagrams. Apart from Quetelet and Jevons, the most important influences were probably those of Galton and of Mulhall’s Dictionary, first published in 1884. Galton was indeed following his father and grandfather in this field, but his pioneer work was mainly restricted to meteorological maps, and he did not contribute to the development of the graphical representation of ec
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Introduction: Wayne Folta writes: In keeping with your interest in graphs, this might interest or inspire you, if you haven’t seen it already, which features 20 scientific graphs that Wired likes, ranging from drawn illustrations to trajectory plots. My reaction: I looked at the first 10. I liked 1, 3, and 5, I didn’t like 2, 7, 8, 9, and 10. I have neutral feelings about 4 and 6. I won’t explain all these feelings, but, just for example, from my perspective, image 9 fails as a statistical graphic (although it might be fine as an infovis) by trying to cram to much into a single image. I don’t think it works to have all the colors on the single wheels; instead I’d prefer some sort of grid of images. Also, I don’t see the point of the circular display. That makes no sense at all; it’s a misleading feature. That said, the graphs I dislike can still be fine for their purpose. A graph in a journal such as Science or Nature is meant to grab the eye of a busy reader (or to go viral on
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Introduction: Stephen Jenkins wrote: I was thinking that you and your blog readers might be interested in “ An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data ” by Jonathan Schwabish, in the most recent Journal of Economic Perspectives (which is the American Economic Association’s main “outreach” journal in some ways). I replied: Ooh, I hate this so much! This seems to represent a horrible example of economists not recognizing that outsiders can help them. We do much much better in political science. To which Jenkins wrote: Ha! I guessed as much — hence sent it. And I’ll now admit I was surprised that JEP took the piece without getting Schwabisch to widen his reference points. To elaborate a bit: I agree with Schwabish’s general advice (“show the data,” “reduce the clutter,” and “integrate the text and the graph”). But then he illustrates with 8 before-and-after stories in which he shows an existing graph and then gives his improvements. My problem is that I don’t like most of his “afte
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Introduction: Following my talk on infovis and statistical graphics at the Empirical Legal Studies conference , Dan Kahan writes: The legal academy, which is making strides toward sensible integration of a variety of empirical methods into its scholarship, is horribly ignorant of the utility of graphic reporting of data, a likely influence of the formative influence that econometric methods has exerted on expectations and habits of mind among legal scholars. Lee Epstein has written a pair of wonderful articles on graphic reporting – 1. Epstein, L., Martin, A. & Boyd, C. On the Effective Communication of the Results of Empirical Studies, Part II. Vand. L. Rev. 60, 798-846 (2007). 2. Epstein, L., Martin, A. & Schneider, M. On the Effective Communication of the Results of Empirical Studies, Part I. Vand. L. Rev. 59, 1811-1871 (2007). – but her efforts haven’t gotten the attention they deserve, and reinforcement, particularly at a venue like CELS is very important. But the main issue there
Introduction: I continue to struggle to convey my thoughts on statistical graphics so I’ll try another approach, this time giving my own story. For newcomers to this discussion: the background is that Antony Unwin and I wrote an article on the different goals embodied in information visualization and statistical graphics, but I have difficulty communicating on this point with the infovis people. Maybe if I tell my own story, and then they tell their stories, this will point a way forward to a more constructive discussion. So here goes. I majored in physics in college and I worked in a couple of research labs during the summer. Physicists graph everything. I did most of my plotting on graph paper–this continued through my second year of grad school–and became expert at putting points at 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, and 4/5 between the x and y grid lines. In grad school in statistics, I continued my physics habits and graphed everything I could. I did notice, though, that the faculty and the other
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Introduction: See here for latest rant.
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Introduction: In his review in 1938 of Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data , by H. Gray Funkhauser, for The Economic Journal , the great economist writes: Perhaps the most striking outcome of Mr. Funkhouser’s researches is the fact of the very slow progress which graphical methods made until quite recently. . . . In the first fifty volumes of the Statistical Journal, 1837-87, only fourteen graphs are printed altogether. It is surprising to be told that Laplace never drew a graph of the normal law of error . . . Edgeworth made no use of statistical charts as distinct from mathematical diagrams. Apart from Quetelet and Jevons, the most important influences were probably those of Galton and of Mulhall’s Dictionary, first published in 1884. Galton was indeed following his father and grandfather in this field, but his pioneer work was mainly restricted to meteorological maps, and he did not contribute to the development of the graphical representation of ec
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Introduction: She was assigned to teach a class in “evidence-based medicine”! ( link from my usual news source). I wonder what was in the syllabus? If anyone has a copy, feel free to send to me and I will post it here. My favorite part of the story, though, is this: Almost all physician assistant students refused to comment to a reporter Tuesday, saying they’d been told by the department not to talk to media. Talk about obedience to authority! They’re studying in a program that offers nonexistent courses, but then they follow the department’s gag order.
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Introduction: What are the x and y-axes here ? P.S. Popeye nails it (see comments).
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