Proportions and rates: we are no dupes

Reader Lucia G. sent me this chart, from Ars Technica's FAQ about the coronavirus:

She notices something wrong with the axis.

The designer took the advice not to make a dual axis, but didn't realize that the two metrics are not measured on the same scale even though both are expressed as percentages.

The blue bars, labeled "cases", is a distribution of cases by age group. The sum of the blue bars should be 100 percent.

The orange bars show fatality rates by age group. Each orange bar's rate is based on the number of cases in that age group. The sum of the orange bars will not add to 100 percent.

In general, the rates will have much lower values than the proportions. At least that should be the case for viruses that are not extremely fatal.

This is what the 80 and over section looks like.

It is true that fatality rate (orange) is particularly high for the elderly while this age group accounts for less than 5 percent of total cases (blue). However, the cases that are fatal, which inhabit the orange bar, must be a subset of the total cases for 80 and over, which are shown in the blue bar. Conceptually, the orange bar should be contained inside the blue bar. So, it's counter-intuitive that the blue bar is so much shorter than the orange bar.

The following chart fixes this issue. It reveals the structure of the data, Total cases are separated by age group, then within each age group, a proportion of the cases are fatal.

This chart also shows that most patients recover in every age group. (This is only approximately true as some of the cases may not have been discharged yet.)

***

This confusion of rates and proportions reminds me of something about exit polls I just wrote about the other day on the sister blog.

When the media make statements about trends in voter turnout rate in the primary elections, e.g. when they assert that youth turnout has not increased, their evidence is from exit polls, which can measure only the distribution of voters by age group. Exit polls do not and cannot measure the turnout rate, which is the proportion of registered (or eligible) voters in the specific age group who voted.

Like the coronavirus data, the scales of these two metrics are different even though they are both percentages: the turnout rate is typically a number between 30 and 70 percent, and summing the rates across all age groups will exceed 100 percent many times over. Summing the proportions of voters across all age groups should be 100 percent, and no more.

Changes in the proportion of voters aged 18-29 and changes in the turnout rate of people aged 18-29 are not the same thing. The former is affected by the turnout of all age groups while the latter is a clean metric affected only by 18 to 29-years-old.

Basically, ignore pundits who use exit polls to comment on turnout trends. No matter how many times they repeat their nonsense, proportions and rates are not to be confused. Which means, ignore comments on turnout trends because the only data they've got come from exit polls which don't measure rates.

 

P.S. Here is some further explanation of my chart, as a response to a question from Enrico B. on Twitter.

The chart can be thought of as two distributions, one for cases (gray) and one for deaths (red). Like this:

The side-by-side version removes the direct visualization of the fatality rate within each age group. To understand fatality rate requires someone to do math in their head. Readers can qualitatively assess that for the 80 and over, they accounted for 3 percent of cases but also about 21 percent of deaths. People aged 70 to 79 however accounted for 9 percent of cases but 30 percent of deaths, etc.

What I did was to scale the distribution of deaths so that they can be compared to the cases. It's like fitting the red distribution inside the gray distribution. Within each age group, the proportion of red against the length of the bar is the fatality rate.

For every 100 cases regardless of age, 3 cases are for people aged 80 and over within which 0.5 are fatal (red).

So, the axis labels are correct. The values are proportions of total cases, although as the designer of the chart, I hope people are paying attention more to the proportion of red, as opposed to the units.

What might strike people as odd is that the biggest red bar does not appear against 80 and above. We might believe it's deadlier the older you are. That's because on an absolute scale, more people aged 70-79 died than those 80 and above. The absolute deaths is the product of the proportion of cases and the fatality rate. That's really a different story from the usual plot of fatality rates by age group. In those charts, we "control" for the prevalence of cases. If every age group were infected in the same frequency, then COVID-19 does kill more 80 and over.

 

 

 

The rule governing which variable to put on which axis, served a la mode

When making a scatter plot, the two variables should not be placed arbitrarily. There is a rule governing this: the outcome variable should be shown on the vertical axis (also called y-axis), and the explanatory variable on the horizontal (or x-) axis.

This chart from the archives of the Economist has this reversed:

The title of the accompanying article is "Ice Cream and IQ"...

In a Trifecta Checkup (link), it's a Type DV chart. It's preposterous to claim eating ice cream makes one smarter without more careful studies. The chart also carries the xyopia fallacy: by showing just two variables, readers are unwittingly led to explain differences in "IQ" using differences in per-capita ice-cream consumption when lots of other stronger variables will explain any gaps in IQ.

In this post, I put aside my objections to the analysis, and focus on the issue of assigning variables to axes. Notice that this chart reverses the convention: the outcome variable (IQ) is shown on the horizontal, and the explanatory variable (ice cream) is shown on the vertical.

Here is a reconstruction of the above chart, showing only the dots that were labeled with country names. I fitted a straight regression line instead of a curve. (I don't understand why the red line in the original chart bends upwards when the data for Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong should be dragging it down.)

Note that the interpretation of the regression line raises eyebrows because the presumed causality is reversed. For each 50 points increase in PISA score (IQ), this line says to expect ice cream consumption to raise by about 1-2 liters per person per year. So higher IQ makes people eat more ice cream.

***

If the convention is respected, then the following scatter plot results:

The first thing to note is that the regression analysis is different here from that shown in the previous chart. The blue regression line is not equivalent to the black regression line from the previous chart. You cannot reverse the roles of the x and y variables in a regression analysis, and so neither should you reverse the roles of the x and y variables in a scatter plot.

The blue regression line can be interpreted as having two sections, roughly, for countries consuming more than or less than 6 liters of ice cream per person per year. In the less-ice-cream countries, the correlation between ice cream and IQ is stronger (I don't endorse the causal interpretation of this statement).

***

When you make a scatter plot, you have two variables for which you want to analyze their correlation. In most cases, you are exploring a cause-effect relationship.

Higher income households cares more on politics.
Less educated citizens are more likely to not register to vote.
Companies with more diverse workforce has better business performance.

Frequently, the reverse correlation does not admit a causal interpretation:

Caring more about politics does not make one richer.
Not registering to vote does not make one less educated.
Making more profits does not lead to more diversity in hiring.

In each of these examples, it's clear that one variable is the outcome, the other variable is the explanatory factor. Always put the outcome in the vertical axis, and the explanation in the horizontal axis.

The justification is scientific. If you are going to add a regression line (what Excel calls a "trendline"), you must follow this convention, otherwise, your regression analysis will yield the wrong result, with an absurd interpretation!

 

[PS. 11/3/2019: The comments below contain different theories that link the two variables, including theories that treat PISA score ("IQ") as the explanatory variable and ice cream consumption as the outcome. Also, I elaborated that the rule does not dictate which variable is the outcome - the designer effectively signals to the reader which variable is regarded as the outcome by placing it in the vertical axis.]

Statistical significance explainer, and Instagram's experiment to hide Likes

There are some statistical concepts that all data visualization practitioners should know about, and the concept of statistical significance is one of them.

It's a hard concept to grasp because it requires one to think beyond the data that are collected. The abstract thinking is necessary since we typically want to make general statements - while using the collected data as evidence.

My new video in the Data Science: The Missing Pieces series explains statistical significance. To be precise, it explains NOT statistically significant. When something is not significant, it causes all sorts of anxieties, panics, half-measures, re-examinations, and havoc. Much of the time, the result is confusion and misinterpretation.

The video addresses a recent news item - Instagram's experiment to hide the Like count. See for example this article. After running this experiment, Instagram's analysts will look for statistical significance. If the result is NOT significant, what does it mean?

Check out the video for more.

 

***
Placed here to serve the machine:

Announcement: Advancing your data skills, Fall 2019

Interrupting the flow of dataviz with the following announcement.

If you're looking to shore up your data skills, modernize your skill set, or know someone looking for hands-on, high-touch instruction in Machine Learning, R, Cloud Computing, Data Quality, Digital Analytics,  A/B Testing and Financial Analysis, Principal Analytics Prep is offering evening classes this Fall. Click here to learn about our courses. 

Our instructors are industry veterans with 10+ years of practical industry experience. And class size is capped to 10, ensuring a high-touch learning environment.

 

Choosing between individuals and aggregates

Friend/reader Thomas B. alerted me to this paper that describes some of the key chart forms used by cancer researchers.

It strikes me that many of the "new" charts plot granular data at the individual level. This heatmap showing gene expressions show one column per patient:

This so-called swimmer plot shows one bar per patient:

This spider plot shows the progression of individual patients over time. Key events are marked with symbols.

These chart forms are distinguished from other ones that plot aggregated statistics: statistical averages, medians, subgroup averages, and so on.

One obvious limitation of such charts is their lack of scalability. The number of patients, the variability of the metric, and the timing of trends all drive up the amount of messiness.

I am left wondering what Question is being addressed by these plots. If we are concerned about treatment of an individual patient, then showing each line by itself would be clearer. If we are interested in the average trends of patients, then a chart that plots the overall average, or subgroup averages would be more accurate. If the interpretation of the individual's trend requires comparing with similar patients, then showing that individual's line against the subgroup average would be preferred.

When shown these charts of individual lines, readers are tempted to play the statistician - without using appropriate tools! Readers draw aggregate conclusions, performing the aggregation in their heads.

The authors of the paper note: "Spider plots only provide good visual qualitative assessment but do not allow for formal statistical inference." I agree with the second part. The first part is a fallacy - if the visual qualitative assessment is good enough, then no formal inference is necessary! The same argument is often made when people say they don't need advanced analysis because their simple analysis is "directionally accurate". When is something "directionally inaccurate"? How would one know?

Reference: Chia, Gedye, et. al., "Current and Evolving Methods to Visualize Biological Data in Cancer Research", JNCI, 2016, 108(8). (link)

***

Meteoreologists, whom I featured in the previous post, also have their own spider-like chart for hurricanes. They call it a spaghetti map:

Compare this to the "cone of uncertainty" map that was featured in the prior post:

These two charts build upon the same dataset. The cone map, as we discussed, shows the range of probable paths of the storm center, based on all simulations of all acceptable models for projection. The spaghetti map shows selected individual simulations. Each line is the most likely trajectory of the storm center as predicted by a single simulation from a single model.

The problem is that each predictive model type has its own historical accuracy (known as "skill"), and so the lines embody different levels of importance. Further, it's not immediately clear if all possible lines are drawn so any reader making conclusions of, say, the envelope containing x percent of these lines is likely to be fooled. Eyeballing the "cone" that contains x percent of the lines is not trivial either. We tend to naturally drift toward aggregate statistical conclusions without the benefit of appropriate tools.

Plots of individuals should be used to address the specific problem of assessing individuals.

As Dorian confounds meteorologists, we keep our minds clear on hurricane graphics, and discover correlation as our friend

As Hurricane Dorian threatens the southeastern coast of the U.S., forecasters are fretting about the lack of consensus among various predictive models used to predict the storm’s trajectory. The uncertainty of these models, as reflected in graphical displays, has been a controversial issue in the visualization community for some time.

Let’s start by reviewing a visual design that has captured meteorologists in recent years, something known as the cone map.

If asked to explain this map, most of us trace a line through the middle of the cone understood to be the center of the storm, the “cone” as the areas near the storm center that are affected, and the warmer colors (red, orange) as indicating higher levels of impact. [Note: We will  design for this type of map circa 2000s.]

The above interpretation is complete, and feasible. Nevertheless, the data used to make the map are forward-looking, not historical. It is still possible to stick to the same interpretation by substituting historical measurement of impact with its projection. As such, the “warmer” regions are projected to suffer worse damage from the storm than the “cooler” regions (yellow).

After I replace the text that was removed from the map (see below), you may notice the color legend, which discloses that the colors on the map encode probabilities, not storm intensity. The text further explains that the chart shows the most probable path of the center of the storm – while the coloring shows the probability that the storm center will reach specific areas.

***

When reading a data graphic, we rarely first look for text about how to read the chart. In the case of the cone map, those who didn’t seek out the instructions may form one of these misunderstandings:

1. For someone living in the yellow-shaded areas, the map does not say that the impact of the storm is projected to be lighter; it’s that the center of the storm has a lower chance of passing right through. If, however, the storm does pay a visit, the intensity of the winds will reach hurricane grade.
2. For someone living outside the cone, the map does not say that the storm will definitely bypass you; it’s that the chance of a direct hit is below the threshold needed to show up on the cone map. Thee threshold is set to attain 66% accurate. The actual paths of storms are expected to stay inside the cone two out of three times.

Adding to the confusion, other designers have produced cone maps in which color is encoding projections of wind speeds. Here is the one for Dorian.

This map displays essentially what we thought the first cone map was showing.

One way to differentiate the two maps is to roll time forward, and imagine what the maps should look like after the storm has passed through. In the wind-speed map (shown below right), we will see a cone of damage, with warmer colors indicating regions that experienced stronger winds.

In the storm-center map (below right), we should see a single curve, showing the exact trajectory of the center of the storm. In other words, the cone of uncertainty dissipates over time, just like the storm itself.

 

After scientists learned that readers were misinterpreting the cone maps, they started to issue warnings, and also re-designed the cone map. The cone map now comes with a black-box health warning right up top. Also, in the storm-center cone map, color is no longer used. The National Hurricane Center even made a youtube pointing out the dos and donts of using the cone map.

***

The conclusion drawn from misreading the cone map isn’t as devastating as it’s made out to be. This is because the two issues are correlated. Since wind speeds are likely to be stronger nearer to the center of the storm, if one lives in a region that has a low chance of being a direct hit, then that region is also likely to experience lower average wind speeds than those nearer to the projected center of the storm’s path.

Alberto Cairo has written often about these maps, and in his upcoming book, How Charts Lie, there is a nice section addressing his work with colleagues at the University of Miami on improving public understanding of these hurricane graphics. I highly recommended Cairo’s book here.

P.S. [9/5/2019] Alberto also put out a post about the hurricane cone map.

 

 

 

Book review: Visualizing Baseball

I requested a copy of Jim Albert’s Visualizing Baseball book, which is part of the ASA-CRC series on Statistical Reasoning in Science and Society that has the explicit goal of reaching a mass audience.

The best feature of Albert’s new volume is its brevity. For someone with a decent background in statistics (and grasp of basic baseball jargon), it’s a book that can be consumed within one week, after which one receives a good overview of baseball analytics, otherwise known as sabermetrics.

Within fewer than 200 pages, Albert outlines approaches to a variety of problems, including:

• Comparing baseball players by key hitting (or pitching) metrics
• Tracking a player’s career
• Estimating the value of different plays, such as a single, a triple or a walk
• Predicting expected runs in an inning from the current state of play
• Analyzing pitches and swings using PitchFX data
• Describing the effect of ballparks on home runs
• Estimating the effect of particular plays on the outcome of a game
• Simulating “fake” games and seasons in order to produce probabilistic forecasts such as X% chance that team Y will win the World Series
• Examining whether a hitter is “streaky” or not

Most of the analyses are descriptive in nature, e.g. describing the number and types of pitches thrown by a particular pitcher, or the change in on-base percentage over the career of a particular hitter. A lesser number of pages are devoted to predictive analytics. This structure is acceptable in a short introductory book. In practice, decision-makers require more sophisticated work on top of these descriptive analyses. For example, what’s the value of telling a coach that the home run was the pivotal moment in a 1-0 game that has played out?

To appreciate the practical implications of the analyses included in this volume, I’d recommend reading Moneyball by Michael Lewis, or the more recent Astroball by Ben Reiter.

For the more serious student of sabermetrics, key omitted details will need to be gleaned from other sources, including other books by the same author – for years, I have recommended Curve Ball by Albert and Bennett to my students.

***

In the final chapters, Albert introduced the simulation of “fake” seasons that underlies predictions. An inquiring reader should investigate how the process is tied back to the reality of what actually happened; otherwise, the simulation will have a life of its own. Further, if one simulates 1,000 seasons of 2018 baseball, a large number of these fake seasons would crown some team other than the Red Sox as the 2018 World Series winner. Think about it: that’s how it is possible to make the prediction that the Red Sox has a say 60 percent chance of winning the World Series in 2018! A key to understanding the statistical way of thinking is to accept the logic of this fake simulated world. It is not the stated goal of Albert to convince readers of the statistical way of thinking – but you’re not going to be convinced unless you think about why we do it this way.

***

While there are plenty of charts included in the book, a more appropriate title for “Visualizing Baseball” would have been “Fast Intro to Baseball Analytics”. With several exceptions, the charts are not essential to understanding the analyses. The dominant form of exposition is first describe the analytical conclusion, then introduce a chart to illustrate that conclusion. The inverse would be: Start with the chart, and use the chart to explain the analysis.

The visualizations are generally of good quality, emphasizing clarity over prettiness. The choice of sticking to one software, ggplot2 in R, without post-production, constrains the visual designer to the preferences of the software designer. Such limitations are evident in chart elements like legends and titles. Here is one example (Chapter 5, Figure 5.8):

By default, the software prints the names of data columns in the titles. Imagine if the plot titles were Changeup, Fastball and Slider instead of CU, FF and SL. Or that the axis labels were “horizontal location” and “vertical location” (check) instead of px and pz. [Note: The chart above was taken from the book's github site; in the  Figure 5.8 in the printed book, the chart titles were edited as suggested.]

The chart analyzes the location relative to the strike zone of pitches that were missed versus pitches that were hit (not missed). By default, the software takes the name of the binary variable (“Miss”) as the legend title, and lists the values of the variable (“True” and “False”) as the labels of the two colors. Imagine if True appeared as “Miss” and False as “Hit” .

Finally, the chart exhibits over-plotting, making it tough to know how many blue or gray dots are present. Smaller dot size might help, or else some form of aggregation.

***

Visualizing Baseball is not the book for readers who learn by running code as no code is included in the book. A github page by the author hosts the code, but only the R/ggplot2 code for generating the data visualization. Each script begins after the analysis or modeling has been completed. If you already know R and ggplot2, the github is worth a visit. In any case, I don’t recommend learning coding from copying and pasting clean code.

All in all, I can recommend this short book to any baseball enthusiast who’s beginning to look at baseball data. It may expand your appreciation of what can be done. For details, and practical implications, look elsewhere.

Seeking simplicity in complex data: Bloomberg's dataviz on UK gender pay gap

Bloomberg featured a thought-provoking dataviz that illustrates the pay gap by gender in the U.K. The dataset underlying this effort is complex, and the designers did a good job simplifying the data for ease of comprehension.

U.K. companies are required to submit data on salaries and bonuses by gender, and by pay quartiles. The dataset is incomplete, since some companies are slow to report, and the analyst decided not to merge companies that changed names.

Companies are classified into industry groups. Readers who read Chapter 3 of Numbers Rule Your World (link) should ask whether these group differences are meaningful by themselves, without controlling for seniority, job titles, etc. The chapter features one method used by the educational testing industry to take a more nuanced analysis of group differences.

***

The Bloomberg visualization has two sections. In the top section, each company is represented by the percent difference between average female pay and average male pay. Then the companies within a given industry is shown in a histogram. The histograms provide a view of the disparity between companies within a given industry. The black line represents the relative proportion of companies in a given industry that have no gender pay gap but it’s the weight of the histogram on either side of the black line that carries the graphic’s message.

This is the histogram for arts, entertainment and recreation.

The spread within this industry is very wide, especially on the left side of the black line. A large proportion of these companies pay women less on average than men, and how much less is highly variable. There is one extreme positive value: Chelsea FC Foundation that pays the average female about 40% more than the average male.

This is the histogram for the public sector.

It is a much tighter distribution, meaning that the pay gaps vary less from organization to organization (this statement ignores the possibility that there are outliers not visible on this graphic). Again, the vast majority of entities in this sector pay women less than men on average.

***

The second part of the visualization look at the quartile data. The employees of each company are divided into four equal-sized groups, based on their wages. Think of these groups as the Top 25% Earners, the Second 25%, etc. Within each group, the analyst looks at the proportion of women. If gender is independent of pay, then we should expect the proportions of women to be about the same for all four quartiles. (This analysis considers gender to be the only explainer for pay gaps. This is a problem I've called xyopia, that frames a complex multivariate issue as a bivariate problem involving one outcome and one explanatory variable. Chapter 3 of Numbers Rule Your World (link) discusses how statisticians approach this issue.)

On the right is the chart for the public sector. This is a pie chart used as a container. Every pie has four equal-sized slices representing the four quartiles of pay.

The female proportion is encoded in both the size and color of the pie slices. The size encoding is more precise while the color encoding has only 4 levels so it provides a “binned” summary view of the same data.

For the public sector, the lighter-colored slice shows the top 25% earners, and its light color means the proportion of women in the top 25% earners group is between 30 and 50 percent. As we move clockwise around the pie, the slices represent the 2nd, 3rd and bottom 25% earners, and women form 50 to 70 percent of each of those three quartiles.

To read this chart properly, the reader must first do one calculation. Women represent about 60% of the top 25% earners in the public sector. Is that good or bad? This depends on the overall representation of women in the public sector. If the sector employs 75 percent women overall, then the 60 percent does not look good but if it employs 40 percent women, then the same value of 60% tells us that the female employees are disproportionately found in the top 25% earners.

That means the reader must compare each value in the pie chart against the overall proportion of women, which is learned from the average of the four quartiles.

***

In the chart below, I make this relative comparison explicit. The overall proportion of women in each industry is shown using an open dot. Then the graphic displays two bars, one for the Top 25% earners, and one for the Bottom 25% earners. The bars show the gap between those quartiles and the overall female proportion. For the top earners, the size of the red bars shows the degree of under-representation of women while for the bottom earners, the size of the gray bars shows the degree of over-representation of women.

The net sum of the bar lengths is a plausible measure of gender inequality.

The industries are sorted from the ones employing fewer women (at the top) to the ones employing the most women (at the bottom). An alternative is to sort by total bar lengths. In the original Bloomberg chart - the small multiples of pie charts, the industries are sorted by the proportion of women in the bottom 25% pay quartile, from smallest to largest.

In making this dataviz, I elected to ignore the middle 50%. This is not a problem since any quartile above the average must be compensated by a different quartile below the average.

***

The challenge of complex datasets is discovering simple ways to convey the underlying message. This usually requires quite a bit of upfront analytics, data transformation, and lots of sketching.

 

 

Form and function: when academia takes on weed

I have a longer article on the sister blog about the research design of a study claiming 420 "cannabis" Day caused more road accident fatalities (link). The blog also has a discussion of the graphics used to present the analysis, which I'm excerpting here for dataviz fans.

The original chart looks like this:

The question being asked is whether April 20 is a special day when viewed against the backdrop of every day of the year. The answer is pretty clear. From this chart, the reader can see:

• that April 20 is part of the background "noise". It's not standing out from the pack;
• that there are other days like July 4, Labor Day, Christmas, etc. that stand out more than April 20

It doesn't even matter what the vertical axis is measuring. The visual elements did their job. 

***

If you look closely, you can even assess the "magnitude" of the evidence, not just the "direction." While April 20 isn't special, it nonetheless is somewhat noteworthy. The vertical line associated with April 20 sits on the positive side of the range of possibilities, and appears to sit above most other days.

The chart form shown above is better at conveying the direction of the evidence than its strength. If the strength of the evidence is required, we use a different chart form.

I produced the following histogram, using the same data:

The histogram is produced by first locating the midpoints# of the vertical lines into buckets, and then counting the number of days that fall into each bucket.  (# Strictly speaking, I use the point estimates.)

The midpoints# are estimates of the fatal crash ratio, which is defined as the excess crash fatalities reported on the "analysis day" relative to the "reference days," which are situated one week before and one week after the analysis day. So April 20 is compared to April 13 and 27. Therefore, a ratio of 1 indicates no excess fatalities on the analysis day. And the further the ratio is above 1, the more special is the analysis day. 

If we were to pick a random day from the histogram above, we will likely land somewhere in the middle, which is to say, a day of the year in which no excess car crashes fatalities could be confirmed in the data.

As shown above, the ratio for April 20 (about 1.12)  is located on the right tail, and at roughly the 94th percentile, meaning that there were 6 percent of analysis days in which the ratios would have been more extreme. 

This is in line with our reading above, that April 20 is noteworthy but not extraordinary.

 

P.S. [4/27/2019] Replaced the first chart with a newer version from Harper's site. The newer version contains the point estimates inside the vertical lines, which are used to generate the histogram.

 

 

 

 

 

The Bumps come to the NBA, courtesy of 538

The team at 538 did a post-mortem of their in-season forecasts of NBA playoffs, using Bumps charts. These charts have a long history and can be traced back to Cambridge rowing. I featured them in these posts from a long time ago (link 1, link 2). 

Here is the Bumps chart for the NBA West Conference showing all 15 teams, and their ranking by the 538 model throughout the season. 

The highlighted team is the Kings. It's a story of ascent especially in the second half of the season. It's also a story of close but no cigar. It knocked at the door for the last five weeks but failed to grab the last spot. The beauty of the Bumps chart is how easy it is to see this story.

Now, if you'd focus on the dotted line labeled "Makes playoffs," and note that beyond the half-way point (1/31), there are no further crossings. This means that the 538 model by that point has selected the eight playoff teams accurately.

***

Now what about NBA East?

This chart highlights the two top teams. This conference is pretty easy to predict at the top. 

What is interesting is the spaghetti around the playoff line. The playoff race was heart-stopping and it wasn't until the last couple of weeks that the teams were settled. 

Also worthy of attention are the bottom-dwellers. Note that the chart is disconnected in the last four rows (ranks 12 to 15). These four teams did not ever leave the cellar, and the model figured out the final rankings around February.

Using a similar analysis, you can see that the model found the top 5 teams by mid December in this Conference, as there are no further crossings beyond that point. 

***
Go check out the FiveThirtyEight article for their interpretation of these charts. 

While you're there, read the article about when to leave the stadium if you'd like to leave a baseball game early, work that came out of my collaboration with Pravin and Sriram.