According To MSNBC, If Online Voters Support Ron Paul, Their Votes Count Less

from the msnbc:-bad-at-math dept

First thing's first: let's face up to the fact that online polls (especially on political issues) are pretty close to meaningless. However, Jamey Fletcher points us to a rather amazing graphical mess perpetrated by MSNBC in response to Ron Paul supporters flooding the vote for its online poll concerning who won the recent dog & pony show debate among a bunch of Republican presidential wannabes. Here's the screenshot he took, and the live poll certainly looks similar to me right now as well (though, at last check, Paul has an even larger percentage of the vote): Now, as Jon Stewart has pointed out, the mainstream press loves to ignore Ron Paul. But math is math. 50% is not just a nudge above 17%... and yet that's what the graphic appears to show. In fact, on Jamey's screen the top two bars are 368 pixels and 244 pixels. That's a very different ratio than 50% to 17%.

Filed Under: graphs, journalism, ron paul
Companies: comcast, msnbc, nbc

DailyDirt: Some Nice Graphs....

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Having lots of data doesn't always make things easier to understand. Interpreting a vast amount of figures is becoming an increasingly important skill, and visualizing information can be a nice way to present an argument. We're always on the lookout for interesting conclusions based on lots of experimental evidence, so if you've got some examples, send them our way in the comments. In the meantime, check out a few of these cool links.

• Hans Rosling's "classic" Ted talk on global health statistics is one of the best demonstrations of infographics ever. Google acquired that Trendalyzer software, but making your own animated bubble charts isn't quite as entertaining. [url]
• Here's an interesting graph comparing 'deaths per kWh' for a variety of energy technologies. Nuclear power's very low fatality rate seems debatable, though. And if coal mining deaths are counted, then it'd also be nice to see a comparison of the dangers of coal mining versus uranium mining... [url]
• The Economist tried crowdsourcing a version of its Big Mac index and came up with some pricing data within the US & China. Really, though, these graphs probably just tell you where the most Economist readers live. [url]
• An analysis of the world's billionaires creates some neat graphs. The graphs aren't that pretty, but the top 5 individuals with the highest age-to-wealth ratio is an interesting ranking. [url]
• To discover more stuff on research & research tools, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

Filed Under: big mac index, billionaires, graphs, hans rosling, nuclear power, trendalyzer
Companies: google