Via Matt Yglesias, a new CBS/ New York Times Poll has been released, accompanied by quite possibly the stupidest graphics ever. The pseudo-pie-chart at right is one of three, all of which have the same glaring flaw as this one.
Somebody really ought to lose their job for this. There's just no excuse for putting out "pie charts" that are this incompetent.
Sadly, this probably went through two or three people before hitting the web, and nobody noticed. It's hard to think of a better example of how deeply innumeracy has penetrated the media.
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The missing 10% is the "silent minority"!
Yikes!!!!
Manifolds? Hidden dimensions? Hey, you are the physicist around here - how do you explain the sudden disappearance of so many unopinionated people?
And your aren't even addressing the most obvious flaw in this attempt at graphical mis-communication: using color to make the small number look bigger, perhaps to make up for using 76% of the circle to represent 66% of the opinions.
This wasn't produced for the innumerate, it was produced by them. I should make up a pie chart with the 10% undecided highlighted in bright red.
Chad, you didn't even point out the worst one!
Look at the one comparing the world's opinion of the US! They switch colors to increase one's impression of the significance of the shift from No to Yes. Truly awful.
Excel is a magical tool. The people who didn't state an opinion have been transformed into part of the majority in all three pie charts. Of course, this only happens when a sorcerer's apprentice, rather than a real wizard, is wielding Excel.
Note that the "Disapprove" pie wedge is about the right size for the quoted percentage. The rest of the pie is assigned to the majority opinion. The other two pie charts at the link are similar.
I'm not sure about that. It might be the perspective, but the pie wedge is a >90 degree angle. 24% should be a little less than 90 deg. On my screen, the pie is an ovoid about 10% wider than it is tall. Pretty sucky, all the way around.
...how deeply innumeracy has penetrated the media.
I think this even understates the problem. I don't think the media has ever really been numerate. Fixing this isn't a matter repairing something that was broken, but making a fundamental change to the culture.
Incompetence is not cause for termination, incompetence is cause for promotion. Incompetents are broad short conduits of Official Truth. Incompetents are seppuku loyal given alternative sequelae. The most vicious liar (e.g., salesman) cannot compete with a credulous imbecile (e.g., Protestant Fundamentalism). [If this abrades the blogger's delicate sensibilities, substitute Borat Sagdiyev.]
Head Start and diversity are not about analytic rigor. They celebrate the right of every voice to be equally cherished. Vote with the stupid! How can so many people be wrong?
This is my favorite pie chart
http://flowingdata.com/2008/09/19/pie-i-have-eaten-and-pie-i-have-not-e…
excuse me if you have already seen this - but it is funny enough to see again.
"Innumeracy" is too kind of a description. This is "fucking moronic."
Please tell us, Uncle Al, why exactly Head Start (programs providing PRESCHOOL services to poor families) should be about analytic rigor. I'm dying to hear about how we're teaching too much sharing and socialization to children which are 4 and 5 years old, and they should be taking derivatives, dagnabit.
in this tough economy, even 100% ain't what it used to be.
I've never used Excel, so I know nothing about its graphing capability. Is the software unable to tell that the parts specified don't add up to the whole?
Redirect Head Start's $6+ billion/year to Intellectually Gifted programs, now $0.001/dollar of the Department of Education (DoE). Purchase what you desire not abhore. DoE studies, all studies, unanimously fail to identify any academic advantage conferred by 44 years of Head Start (though Head Start does plunder the public purse to generously feed and babysit sub-intelligent get that its mothers may get some more).
Allan Bakke got tossed. Diversity admission Patrick Chavis got more publicity. The judge overseeing his case ruled that letting Chavis "continue in the practice of organized medicine will endanger the public health, safety and welfare."
http://law.jrank.org/pages/9725/Regents-University-California-v-Bakke.h…
http://www.adversity.net/FRAMES/Editorials/48_PatrickChavis.htm
Objective reality has no place in social advocacy. Those who disagree are thereby proven unqualified to comment.
What really needs to be done is to forget all these targeted programs, both gifted programs and programs for underprivileged children and pay attention to the fact that our schools are behind the rest of the developed world perhaps because our teachers are behind the rest of the developed world. No amount of gifted programs will let our students compete with students being taught in, for example, Germany by experts in the field (PhDs are common, and while that's not a guarantee of competence, it requires an understanding of the field's basics). The pay gap between my brother (who is a fantastic mathematics teacher and goes well beyond anything that could be reasonably expected of him to help both gifted students prepare for BC calculus and college mathematics and those in the remedial algebra classes) and a highschool teacher in Germany or Japan is obscene.
Also, I have yet to come across a gifted program that actually does any educating, but, as they say, data is not the plural of anecdote. There's always the difficulty evaluating gifted programs in that students evaluated as gifted are also the students best able to teach themselves, regardless of who may be grunting lessons at them at the time.
What's wrong with that graph? The percentages sum up to 90 degrees, which as everybody knows is a full circle!
If you surf over to the CBS article, you'll see that this is not the only error. The US respectability poll is only 88% total...a 12% silent minority....
There are only two kinds of people. The 66% for whom CBS pie graphs make sense, and the 24% for which they don't.