Lies, Damn Lies, and Charts
I like charts. They make statistics visually compelling. They are pictures that tell a thousand words. But often it's hard to tell just what a chart is talking about even as it poses as clear.
I've been reading Paul Krugman for decades now. He uses charts liberally to illustrate the points he makes. He uses charts a lot more in his new substack than he did when he did his NYT column. But I confess that I often have no idea what the charts mean other than to show trends of some sort going up or down. Krugman is meticulous in crediting his sources but I just take his word for it that they are credible and reliable.
With Krugman I am confident that if I actually checked his information that I would find it to be accurate and reality based. Not all charts are from such reliable sources as we've seen recently. The important thing for lots of charts isn't the accuracy of the data (which is invisible) but is the visual impression it leaves.
When I was a student we made graphs of various things that were pretty useful. I remember one physics lab where we measured the acceleration due to gravity by rolling a ball down a slope over carbon paper that would leave a trace on graph paper. After a couple of hours of calculating (mostly a tedious procedure involving measuring errors) I actually attained a fairly accurate measurement of G.
The charts we see on the news aren't useful tools in the way a graph can be. A sort of paradox; the very software that automated scientists' handling of graphs from data enabled anybody with a spreadsheet to make a chart from fictitious data sets.
Charts seem to convey the TRUTH behind chaotic data. What a chart really does is make a particular point of view vivid but hides the details behind several levels of abstraction. This is both a feature and a bug. The scientist needs that abstract view as a part of their understanding. The promoter needs the abstract view to persuade people to act in a certain way but isn't constrained by reality.
Charts provide a particular way of presenting information but they don't fit in all contexts. We see charts all the time in the news but never in the ads that run alongside the news. In a way, charts offer too much irrelevant information if you're trying to sell sweaters or cars.
What do you think?
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.