Unrecoverable error

This belongs to the light entertainment category. My former classmate Alan decided to give me an impossible challenge, how to improve this hopeless chart, from a Chinese publication... a study of the consumption patterns of Chinese born after 1980.

Here it is (with my translation):

 

In the article, they stated that "Singles born after 1980 have different values from those born before, mainly in three areas: desire of independence, seeking adventure, and valuing friendship". (I guess they decided to call people born before 1980 traditionals.)

Comments

[Yihui]

Haah!! I'm surprised that you understand Chinese?!

The translation "Desire independence" seems a little bit inaccurate; I think the actual meaning was "Pursuit of (unique) personalities"

Anyway, it is common to see stupid MS Excel graphs in Chinese public media... (I'm not saying Excel is stupid) Personally I have a "fancy" name for this phenomenon -- "cooking pies" (in Chinese 烙大饼) because Excel-like graphs look like pies for me.

Thanks for the joke, BTW.

[u]

扁担长，板凳宽，扁担没有板凳宽，板凳没有扁担长，扁担绑在了板凳上，板凳不让扁担绑在了板凳上，扁担偏要扁担绑在了板凳上。”

[u]

扁担长，板凳宽，扁担没有板凳宽，板凳没有扁担长，扁担绑在了板凳上，板凳不让扁担绑在了板凳上，扁担偏要扁担绑在了板凳上。”

[dan l]

Pole length, bench width, pole width no bench, the bench is not a long pole, pole tied to a bench, the bench not to pole tied to the bench, picking pole pole tied to the bench

???

I don't speak chinese, but I can use ubiquity like a mofo.

[Kaiser]

Yihui: yes, that one was a little difficult to translate and I decided to translate the "meaning". I think individuality is what they are after but I feel that the notion of independent thinking is probably what they are after. The "me" generation, so to speak.

[Human Powered]

I suppose this could be an example of statistical significance vs. practical significance. With a large enough sample even tiny differences can make the groups seem "different". However, actually getting representative samples in China is challenging to say the least.

[Liuwanxiang]

I think the picture you quoted may be only a part of a full chart, discussing on it just like the blindman touch the elephent.
In China, we call those born after 1980 as "80hou"/"80post", because the birth control policy(one-child policy )was implemented after 1980. 80post are born in a more rich age, they have no brother/sister, they have great difference to the 70post/60post in all aspect, not like the picture shows(almost the same). btw, I am a 70hou.
Many charts in chinese publishs are not professional, but not all, there are also professional ones.
welcome to my blog, it is about chart, you may can't read chinese, but you can read the pictures in my blog.

[masterstroke]

lolz this is masterful. i also like how the chinese ultranationalists come out of the woodwork to defend it