Finding the story in complex datasets

In CT Mirror's feature about Connecticut, which I wrote about in the previous post, there is one graphic that did not rise to the same level as the others.

This section deals with graduation rates of the state's high school districts. The above chart focuses on exactly five districts. The line charts are organized in a stack. No year labels are provided. The time window is 11 years from 2010 to 2021. The column of numbers show the difference in graduation rates over the entire time window.

The five lines look basically the same, if we ignore what looks to be noisy year-to-year fluctuations. This is due to the weird aspect ratio imposed by stacking.

Why are those five districts chosen? Upon investigation, we learn that these are the five districts with the biggest improvement in graduation rates during the 11-year time window.

The same five schools also had some of the lowest graduation rates at the start of the analysis window (2010). This must be so because if a school graduated 90% of its class in 2010, it would be mathematically impossible for it to attain a 35% percent point improvement! This is a dissatisfactory feature of the dataviz.

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In preparing an alternative version, I start by imagining how readers might want to utilize a visualization of this dataset. I assume that the readers may have certain school(s) they are particularly invested in, and want to see its/their graduation performance over these 11 years.

How does having the entire dataset help? For one thing, it provides context. What kind of context is relevant? As discussed above, it's futile to compare a school at the top of the ranking to one that is near the bottom. So I created groups of schools. Each school is compared to other schools that had comparable graduation rates at the start of the analysis period.

Amistad School District, which takes pole position in the original dataviz, graduated only 58% of its pupils in 2010 but vastly improved its graduation rate by 35% over the decade. In the chart below (left panel), I plotted all of the schools that had graduation rates between 50 and 74% in 2010. The chart shows that while Amistad is a standout, almost all schools in this group experienced steady improvements. (Whether this phenomenon represents true improvement, or just grade inflation, we can't tell from this dataset alone.)

The right panel shows the group of schools with the next higher level of graduation rates in 2010. This group of schools too increased their graduation rates almost always. The rate of improvement in this group is lower than in the previous group of schools.

The next set of charts show school districts that already achieved excellent graduation rates (over 85%) by 2010. The most interesting group of schools consists of those with 85-89% rates in 2010. Their performance in 2021 is the most unpredictable of all the school groups. The majority of districts did even better while others regressed.

Overall, there is less variability than I'd expect in the top two school groups. They generally appeared to have been able to raise or maintain their already-high graduation rates. (Note that the scale of each chart is different, and many of the lines in the second set of charts are moving within a few percentages.)

One more note about the charts: The trend lines are "smoothed" to focus on the trends rather than the year to year variability. Because of smoothing, there is some awkward-looking imprecision e.g. the end-to-end differences read from the curves versus the observed differences in the data. These discrepancies can easily be fixed if these charts were to be published.

Thoughts on Daniel's fix for dual-axes charts

I've taken a little time to ponder Daniel Z's proposed "fix" for dual-axes charts (link). The example he used is this:

In that long post, Daniel explained why he preferred to mix a line with columns, rather than using the more common dual lines construction: to prevent readers from falsely attributing meaning to crisscrossing lines. There are many issues with dual-axes charts, which I won't repeat in this post; one of their most dissatisfying features is the lack of connection between the two vertical scales, and thus, it's pretty easy to manufacture an image of correlation when it doesn't exist. As shown in this old post, one can expand or restrict one of the vertical axes and shift the line up and down to "match" the other vertical axis.

Daniel's proposed fix retains the dual axes, and he even restores the dual lines construction.

How is this chart different from the typical dual-axes chart, like the first graph in this post?

Recall that the problem with using two axes is that the designer could squeeze, expand or shift one of the axes in any number of ways to manufacture many realities. What Daniel effectively did here is selecting one specific way to transform the "New Customers" axis (shown in gray).

His idea is to run a simple linear regression between the two time series. Think of fitting a "trendline" in Excel between Revenues and New Customers. Then, use the resulting regression equation to compute an "estimated" revenues based on the New Customers series. The coefficients of this regression equation then determines the degree of squeezing/expansion and shifting applied to the New Customers axis.

The main advantage of this "fix" is to eliminate the freedom to manufacture multiple realities. There is exactly one way to transform the New Customers axis.

The chart itself takes a bit of time to get used to. The actual values plotted in the gray line are "estimated revenues" from the regression model, thus the blue axis values on the left apply to the gray line as well. The gray axis shows the respective customer values. Because we performed a linear fit, each value of estimated revenues correspond to a particular customer value. The gray line is thus a squeezed/expanded/shifted replica of the New Customers line (shown in orange in the first graph). The gray line can then be interpreted on two connected scales, and both the blue and gray labels are relevant.

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What are we staring at?

The blue line shows the observed revenues while the gray line displays the estimated revenues (predicted by the regression line). Thus, the vertical gaps between the two lines are the "residuals" of the regression model, i.e. the estimation errors. If you have studied Statistics 101, you may remember that the residuals are the components that make up the R-squared, which measures the quality of fit of the regression model. R-squared is the square of r, which stands for the correlation between Customers and the observed revenues. Thus the higher the (linear) correlation between the two time series, the higher the R-squared, the better the regression fit, the smaller the gaps between the two lines.

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There is some value to this chart, although it'd be challenging to explain to someone who has not taken Statistics 101.

While I like that this linear regression approach is "principled", I wonder why this transformation should be preferred to all others. I don't have an answer to this question yet.

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Daniel's fix reminds me of a different, but very common, chart.

This chart shows actual vs forecasted inflation rates. This chart has two lines but only needs one axis since both lines represent inflation rates in the same range.

We can think of the "estimated revenues" line above as forecasted or expected revenues, based on the actual number of new customers. In particular, this forecast is based on a specific model: one that assumes that revenues is linearly related to the number of new customers. The "residuals" are forecasting errors.

In this sense, I think Daniel's solution amounts to rephrasing the question of the chart from "how closely are revenues and new customers correlated?" to "given the trend in new customers, are we over- or under-performing on revenues?"

Instead of using the dual-axes chart with two different scales, I'd prefer to answer the question by showing this expected vs actual revenues chart with one scale.

This does not eliminate the question about the "principle" behind the estimated revenues, but it makes clear that the challenge is to justify why revenues is a linear function of new customers, and no other variables.

Unlike the dual-axes chart, the actual vs forecasted chart is independent of the forecasting method. One can produce forecasted revenues based on a complicated function of new customers, existing customers, and any other factors. A different model just changes the shape of the forecasted revenues line. We still have two comparable lines on one scale.

 

 

 

 

 

All about Connecticut

This dataviz project by CT Mirror is excellent. The project walks through key statistics of the state of Connecticut.

Here are a few charts I enjoyed.

The first one shows the industries employing the most CT residents. The left and right arrows are perfect, much better than the usual dot plots.

The industries are sorted by decreasing size from top to bottom, based on employment in 2019. The chosen scale is absolute, showing the number of employees. The relative change is shown next to the arrow heads in percentages.

The inclusion of both absolute and relative scales may be a source of confusion as the lengths of the arrows encode the absolute differences, not the relative differences indicated by the data labels. This type of decision is always difficult for the designer. Selecting one of the two scales may improve clarity but induce loss aversion.

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The next example is a bumps chart showing the growth in residents with at least a bachelor's degree.

This is more like a slopegraph as it appears to draw straight lines between two time points 9 years apart, omitting the intervening years. Each line represents a state. Connecticut's line is shown in red. The message is clear. Connecticut is among the most highly educated out of the 50 states. It maintained this advantage throughout the period.

I'd prefer to use solid lines for the background states, and the axis labels can be sparser.

It's a little odd that pretty much every line has the same slope. I'm suspecting that the numbers came out of a regression model, with varying slopes by state, but the inter-state variance is low.

In the online presentation, one can click on each line to see the values.

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The final example is a two-sided bar chart:

This shows migration in and out of the state. The red bars represent the number of people who moved out, while the green bars represent those who moved into the state. The states are arranged from the most number of in-migrants to the least.

I have clipped the bottom of the chart as it extends to 50 states, and the bottom half is barely visible since the absolute numbers are so small.

I'd suggest showing the top 10 states. Then group the rest of the states by region, and plot them as regions. This change makes the chart more compact, as well as more useful.

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There are many other charts, and I encourage you to visit and support this data journalism.

 

 

 

Area chart is not the solution

A reader left a link to a Wiki chart, which is ghastly:

This chart concerns the trend of relative proportions of House representatives in the U.S. Congress by state, and can be found at this Wikipedia entry. The U.S. House is composed of Representatives, and the number of representatives is roughly proportional to each state's population. This scheme actually gives small states disporportional representation, since the lowest number of representatives is 1 while the total number of representatives is fixed at 435.

We can do a quick calculation: 1/435 = 0.23% so any state that has less than 0.23% of the population is over-represented in the House. Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming are all close to that level. The primary way in which small states get larger representation is via the Senate, which sits two senators per state no matter the size. (If you've wondered about Nate Silver's website: 435 Representatives + 100 Senators + 3 for DC = 538 electoral votes for U.S. Presidental elections.)

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So many things have gone wrong with this chart. There are 50 colors for 50 states. The legend arranges the states by the appropriate metric (good) but in ascending order (bad). This is a stacked area chart, which makes it very hard to figure out the values other than the few at the bottom of the chart.

A nice way to plot this data is a tile map with line charts. I found a nice example that my friend Xan put together in 2018:

A tile map is a conceptual representation of the U.S. map in which each state is represented by equal-sized squares. The coordinates of the states are distorted in order to line up the tiles. A tile map is a small-multiples setup in which each square contains a chart of the same design to faciliate inter-state comparisons.

In the above map, Xan also takes advantage of the foregrounding concept. Each chart actually contains all 50 lines for every state, all shown in gray while the line for the specific state is bolded and shown in red.

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A chart with 50 lines looks very different from one with 50 areas stacked on each other. California, the most populous state, has 12% of the total population so the line chart has 50 lines that will look like spaghetti. Thus, the fore/backgrounding is important to make sure it's readable.

I suspect that the designer chose a stacked area chart because the line chart looked like spaghetti. But that's the wrong solution. While the lines no longer overlap each other, it is a real challenge to figure out the state-level trends - one has to focus on the heights of the areas, rather than the boundary lines.

[P.S. 2/27/2023] As we like to say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Twitter reader with the handle LHZGJG made the tile map I described above. It looks like this:

You can pick out the states with the key changes really fast. California, Texas, Florida on the upswing, and New York, Pennsylvania going down. I like the fact that the state names are spelled out. Little tweaks are possible but this is a great starting point. Thanks LHZGJG! ]

 

Visual cues affect how data are perceived

Here's a recent NYT graphic showing California's water situation at different time scales (link to article).

It's a small multiples display, showing the spatial distribution of the precipitation amounts in California. The two panels show, respectively, the short-term view (past month) and the longer-term view (3 years). Precipitation is measured in relative terms,  so what is plotted is the relative ratio of precipitation in the reference period, with 100 being the 30-year average.

Green is much wetter than average while brown is much drier than average.

The key to making this chart work is a common color scheme across the two panels.

Also, the placement of major cities provides anchor points for our eyes to move back and forth between the two panels.

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The NYT graphic is technically well executed. I'm a bit unhappy with the headline: "Recent rains haven't erased California's long-term drought".

At the surface, the conclusion seems sensible. Look, there is a lot of green, even deep green, on the left panel, which means the state got lots more rain than usual in the past month. Now, on the right panel, we find patches of brown, and very little green.

But pay attention to the scale. The light brown color, which covers the largest area, has value 70 to 90, thus, these regions have gotten 10-30% less precipitation than average in the past three years relative to the 30-year average.

Here's the question: what does it mean by "erasing California's long-term drought"? Does the 3-year average have to equal or exceed the 30-year average? Why should that be the case?

If we took all 3-year windows within those 30 years, we're definitely not going to find that each such 3-year average falls at or above the 30-year average. To illustrate this, I pulled annual rainfall data for San Francisco. Here is a histogram of 3-year averages for the 30-year period 1991-2020.

For example, the first value is the average rainfall for years 1989, 1990 and 1991, the next value is the average of 1990, 1991, and 1992, and so on. Each value is a relative value relative to the overall average in the 30-year window. There are two more values beyond 2020 that is not shown in the histogram. These are 57%, and 61%, so against the 30-year average, those two 3-year averages were drier than usual.

The above shows the underlying variability of the 3-year averages inside the reference time window. We have to first define "normal", and that might be a value between 70% and 130%.

In the same way, we can establish the "normal" range for the entire state of California. If it's also 70% to 130%, then the last 3 years as shown in the map above should be considered normal.

 

 

Trying too hard

Today, I return to the life expectancy graphic that Antonio submitted. In a previous post, I looked at the bumps chart. The centerpiece of that graphic is the following complicated bar chart.

Let's start with the dual axes. On the left, age, and on the right, year of birth. I actually like this type of dual axes. The two axes present two versions of the same scale so the dual axes exist without distortion. It just allows the reader to pick which scale they want to use.

It baffles me that the range of each bar runs from 2.5 years to 7.5 years or 7.5 years to 2.5 years, with 5 or 10 years situated in the middle of each bar.

Reading the rest of the chart is like unentangling some balled up wires. The author has created a statistical model that attributes cause of death to male life expectancy in such a way that you can take the difference in life expectancy between two time points, and do a kind of waterfall analysis in which each cause of death either adds to or subtracts from the prior life expectancy, with the sum of these additions and substractions leading to the end-of-period life expectancy.

The model is complicated enough, and the chart doesn't make it any easier.

The bars are rooted at the zero value. The horizontal axis plots addition or substraction to life expectancy, thus zero represents no change during the period. Zero does not mean the cause of death (e.g. cancer) does not contribute to life expectancy; it just means the contribution remains the same.

The changes to life expectancy are shown in units of months. I'd prefer to see units of years because life expectancy is almost always given in years. Using years turn 2.5 months into 0.2 years which is a fraction, but it allows me to see the impact on the reported life expectancy without having to do a month-to-year conversion.

The chart highlights seven causes of death with seven different colors, plus gray for others.

What really does a number on readers is the shading, which adds another layer on top of the hues. Each color comes in one of two shading, referencing two periods of time. The unshaded bar segments concern changes between 2010 and "2019" while the shaded segments concern changes between "2019" and 2020. The two periods are chosen to highlight the impact of COVID-19 (the red-orange color), which did not exist before "2019".

Let's zoom in on one of the rows of data - the 72.5 to 77.5 age group.

COVID-19 (red-orange) has a negative impact on life expectancy and that's the easy one to see. That's because COVID-19's contribution as a cause of death is exactly zero prior to "2019". Thus, the change in life expectancy is a change from zero. This is not how we can interpret any of the other colors.

Next, we look at cancer (blue). Since this bar segment sits on the right side of zero, cancer has contributed positively to change in life expectancy between 2010 and 2020. Practically, that means proportionally fewer people have died from cancer. Since the lengths of these bar segments correspond to the relative value, not absolute value, of life expectancy, longer bars do not necessarily indicate more numerous deaths.

Now the blue segment is actually divided into two parts, the shaded and not shaded. The not-shaded part is for the period "2019" to 2020 in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shaded part is for the period 2010 to "2019". It is a much wider span but it also contains 9 years of changes versus "1 year" so it's hard to tell if the single-year change is significantly different from the average single-year change of the past 9 years. (I'm using these quotes because I don't know whether they split the year 2019 in the middle since COVID-19 didn't show up till the end of that year.)

Next, we look at the yellow-brown color correponding to CVD. The key feature is that this block is split into two parts, one positive, one negative. Prior to "2019", CVD has been contributing positively to life expectancy changes while after "2019", it has contributed negatively. This observation raises some questions: why would CVD behave differently with the arrival of the pandemic? Are there data problems?

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A small multiples design - splitting the period into two charts - may help here. To make those two charts comparable, I'd suggest annualizing the data so that the 9-year numbers represent the average annual values instead of the cumulative values.

 

 

Here's a radar chart that works, sort of

In the same Reuters article that featured the speedometer chart which I discussed in this blog post (link), the author also deployed a small multiples of radar charts.

These radar charts are supposed to illustrate the article's theme that "European countries are racing to fill natural gas storage sites ahead of winter."

Here's the aggregate chart that shows all countries:

In general, I am not a fan of radar charts. When I first looked at this chart, I also disliked it. But keep reading because I eventually decided that this usage is an exception. One just needs to figure out how to read it.

One reason why I dislike radar charts is that they always come with a lot of non-data-ink baggage. We notice that the months of the year are plotted in a circle starting at the top. They marked off the start of the war on Feb 24, 2022 in red. Then, they place the dotted circle, which represents the 80% target gas storage amount.

The trick is to avoid interpreting the areas, or the shapes of the blue and gray patches. I know, they look cool and grab our attention but in the context of conveying data, they are meaningless.

Instead of areas, focus on the boundaries of those patches. Don't follow one boundary around the circle. Pick a point in time, corresponding to a line between the center of the circle and the outermost circle, and look at the gap between the two lines. In the diagram shown right, I marked off the two relevant points on the day of the start of the war.

From this, we observe that across Europe, the gas storage was far less than the 80% target (recently set).

By comparing two other points (the blue and gray boundaries), we see that during February, gas storage is at a seasonal low, and in 2022, it is on the low side of the 5-year average. 

However, the visual does not match well with the theme of the article! While the gap between the blue and gray boundaries decreased since the start of the war, the blue boundary does not exceed the historical average, and does not get close to 80% until August, a month in which gas storage reaches 80% in a typical year.

This is example of a chart in which there is a misalignment between the Q and the V corners of the Trifecta Checkup (link).

The question/message is that Europeans are reacting to the war by increasing their gas storage beyond normal. The visual actually says that they are increasing the gas storage as per normal.

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As I noted before, when read in a particular way, these radar charts serve their purpose, which is more than can be said for most radar charts.

The designer made several wise choices:

Instead of drawing one ring for each year of data, the designer averaged the past 5 years and turned that into one single ring (patch). You can imagine what this radar chart would look like if the prior data were not averaged: hoola hoop mania!

Simplifying the data in this way also makes the small multiples work. The designer uses the aggregate chart as a legend/how to read this. And in a further section below, the designer plots individual countries, without the non-data-ink baggage:

Thanks againto longtime reader Antonio R. who submitted this chart.

Happy Labor Day weekend for those in the U.S.!

 

 

 

Dataviz is good at comparisons if we make the right comparisons

In an article about gas prices around the world, the Washington Post uses the following bar chart (link):

There are a few wrinkles in this one compared to the most generic bar chart one can produce:

(The numbers on my chart are not the same as Washington Post's. That's because the data vendor charges for data, except for the most recent week. So, my data is from a different week.)

The gas prices are not expressed in dollars but a transformation turns prices into a cost-effectiveness metric: miles per dollar, or more precisely, miles per $40 dollars of gas. The metric has a reverse direction - the higher the price, the lower the miles. The data transformation belongs to the D corner of the Trifecta Checkup framework (link). Depending on how one poses the Q(uestion) of the chart, the shift from dollars to miles can bring the Q and the D in sync.

In the V(isual) corner, the designer embellishes the bars. A car icon is placed at the tip of each bar while the bar itself is turned into a wavy path, symbolizing a dirt path. The driving metaphor is in full play. In fact, the video makes the most out of it. There is no doubt that the embellishment has turned a mere scientific presentation into a form of entertainment.

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Did the embellishment harm visual clarity? For the most part, no.

The worst it can get is when they compared U.S. and India/South Africa:

The left column shows the original charts from the article. In  both charts, the two cars are so close together that it is impossible to learn the scale of the difference. The amount of difference is a fraction of the width of a car icon.

The right column shows the "self-sufficiency test". Imagine the data labels are not on the chart. What we learn is that if we wanted to know how big of a gap is between the two countries, when reading the charts on the left, we are relying on the data labels, not the visual elements. On the right side, if we really want to learn the gaps, we have to look through the car icons to find the tips of the bars!

This discussion does not necessarily doom the appealing chart. If the message one wants to send with the India/South Afrcia charts is that there is negligible difference between them, then it is not crucial to present the precise differences in prices.

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The real problem with this dataviz is in the D corner. Comparing countries is hard.

As shown above, by the miles per $40 spend metric, U.S. and India are rated essentially the same. So is the average American and the average Indian suffering equally?

Far from it. The clue comes from the aggregate chart, in which countries are divided into three tiers: high income, upper middle income and lower middle income. The U.S. belongs to the high-income tier while India falls into the lower-middle-income tier.

The cost of living in India is much lower than in the US. Forty dollars is a much bigger chunk of an Indian paycheck than an American one.

To adjust for cost of living, economists use a PPP (purchasing power parity) value. The following chart shows the difference:

The right graph contains cost-of-living adjustments. It shows a completely different picture. Nominally (left chart), the price of gas in about the same in dollar terms between U.S. and India. In terms of cost of living, gas is actually 5 times more expensive in India. Thus, the adjusted miles per $40 gas number is much smaller for India than the unadjusted. (Because PPP is relative to U.S. prices, the U.S. numbers are not affected.)

PPP is not the end-all here. According to the Economic Times (India), only 22 out of 1,000 Indians own cars, compared to 980 out of 1,000 Americans. Think about the implication of using any statistic that averages the entire population!

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Why is gas more expensive in California than the U.S. average? The talking point I keep hearing is environmental regulations. Gas prices may be higher in Europe for a similar reason. Residents in those places may be willing to pay higher prices because they get satisfaction from playing their part in preserving the planet for future generations.

The footnote discloses this not-trivial issue.

When converting from dollars per gallon/liter into miles per $40, we need data on miles per gallon/liter. Americans notoriously drive cars (trucks, SUVs, etc.) that have much lower mileage than those driven by other countries. However, this factor is artificially removed by assuming the same car with 32 mpg on all countries. A quick hop to the BTS website tells us that the average mpg of American cars is a third of that assumption. [See note below.]

Ignoring cross-country comparisons for the time being, the true number for U.S. is not 247 miles per $40 spent on gas as claimed. It is a third of that value: 82 miles per $40 spent.

It's tough to find data on fuel economy of all passenger cars, not just new passenger cars. I found Australia's number, which is 21 mpg. So this brings the miles per $40 number down from about 230 to 115. These are not small adjustments.

Washington Post's analysis paints a simplistic picture that presupposes that price is the only thing people care about. I call this issue xyopia. It's when the analyst frames the problem as factor x explaining outcome y, and when factor x is not the only, and frequently not even the most important, factor affecting y.

More on xyopia.

More discussion of Washington Post graphics.

 

[P.S. 7-25-2022. Reader Cody Curtis pointed out in the comments that the Bureau of Transportation Statistics report was using km/liter as units, not miles per gallon. The 10 km/liter number for average cars is roughly 23 mpg. I'll leave the text as is in the post as the larger point is valid: that there is variation in average fuel economy between nations - partly due to environemental regulation and consumer behavior - and thus, a proper comparison requires adjusting for this factor.]

The what of visualization, beyond the how

A long-time reader sent me the following chart from a Nature article, pointing out that it is rather worthless.

The simple bar chart plots the number of downloads, organized by country, from the website called Sci-Hub, which I've just learned is where one can download scientific articles for free - working around the exorbitant paywalls of scientific journals.

The bar chart is a good example of a Type D chart (Trifecta Checkup). There is nothing wrong with the purpose or visual design of the chart. Nevertheless, the chart paints a misleading picture. The Nature article addresses several shortcomings of the data.

The first - and perhaps most significant - problem is that many Sci-Hub users are expected to access the site via VPN servers that hide their true countries of origin. If the proportion of VPN users is high, the entire dataset is called into doubt. The data would contain both false positives (in countries with VPN servers) and false negatives (in countries with high numbers of VPN users). 

The second problem is seasonality. The dataset covered only one month. Many users are expected to be academics, and in the southern hemisphere, schools are on summer vacation in January and February. Thus, the data from those regions may convey the wrong picture.

Another problem, according to the Nature article, is that Sci-Hub has many competitors. "The figures include only downloads from original Sci-Hub websites, not any replica or ‘mirror’ site, which can have high traffic in places where the original domain is banned."

This mirror-site problem may be worse than it appears. Yes, downloads from Sci-Hub underestimate the entire market for "free" scientific articles. But these mirror sites also inflate Sci-Hub statistics. Presumably, these mirror sites obtain their inventory from Sci-Hub by setting up accounts, thus contributing lots of downloads.

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Even if VPN and seasonality problems are resolved, the total number of downloads should be adjusted for population. The most appropriate adjustment factor is the population of scientists, but that statistic may be difficult to obtain. A useful proxy might be the number of STEM degrees by country - obtained from a UNESCO survey (link).

A metric of the type "number of Sci-Hub downloads per STEM degree" sounds odd and useless. I'd argue it's better than the unadjusted total number of Sci-Hub downloads. Just don't focus on the absolute values but the relative comparisons between countries. Even better, we can convert the absolute values into an index to focus attention on comparisons.

 

Displaying convoluted indices

I reviewed another batch of projects from Ray Vella's class at NYU. The following piece by Carlos Lasso made an impression on me. There are no pyrotechnics but he made one decision that added a lot of clarity to the graphic.

The underlying dataset gauges the income disparity of regions within nine countries. The richest and the poorest regions are selected for each country. Two time points are shown. Altogether, there are 9x2x2 = 36 numbers.

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Let's take a deeper look at these numbers. Notice they are not in dollars, or any kind of currency, despite being about incomes. The numbers are index values, relative to 100. What does the reference level of 100 represent?

The value of 100 crosses every bar of the chart so that 100 has meaning in each country and each year. In fact, there are 18 definitions of 100 in this chart with 36 numbers, one for each country-year pair. The average national income is set to 100 for each country in each year. This is a highly convoluted indexing strategy.

The following chart is a re-visualization of the bottom part of Carlos' infographic.

I shifted the scale of the horizontal axis. The value of zero does not hold special meaning in Carlos' chart. I subtracted 100 from the relative regional income indices, thus all regions with income above the average have positive values while those below the national average have negative values. (There are other challenges with the ratio scale, which I'll skip over in this post. The minimum value is -100 while the maximum value can be very large.)

The rescaling is not really the point of this post. To see what Carlos did, we have to look at the example shown in class. The graphic which the students were asked to improve has the following structure:

This one-column structure places four bars beside each country, grouped by year. Carlos pulled the year dimension out, and showed the same dataset in two columns.

This small change makes a great difference in ease of comprehension. Carlos' version unpacks the two key types of comparisons one might want to make: trend within a given country (horizontal comparison) and contrast between countries in a given year (vertical comparison).

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I always try to avoid convoluted indexing. The cost of using such indices is the big how-to-read-this box.