Posts tagged as:

charts

Graphing using R

17 May 2010
R Logo

Long-time readers of the Stubborn Mule will know that charts are a regular feature here. Almost all of these charts were produced using the R statistical software package which, in my view, produces far superior results to the most commonly used graphing tool: Excel. As a community service to help rid the world of horrible [...]

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Gigabang for your buck

1 May 2010
Small ISP chart

The Age and the Herald published an extremely junky chart about broadband plans that hides some anomalies in the data and provides a valuable lesson on the importance of good charting technique.

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The Mule trips up

21 April 2010

In my last post, I fell into a common trap when dealing with financial time-series data: I did not adjust for inflation. This post fixes that by looking at growth in “real” personal consumption in the US.

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Pyramid Perversion – More Junk Charts

12 March 2010
Pyramid Chart

While it may be very tempting to use impressive-looking 3D charts to show off your data, the results can be extremely misleading. A look at a pair of “food pyramids” highlights the problem with pyramid charts.

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Junk Charts #3 – US Business Lending

23 February 2010
Thumbnail image for Junk Charts #3 – US Business Lending

Clusterstock’s “Chart of the Day” has a chart showing business lending “falling like a knife”. But closer examination of the chart reveals that it is in fact quite misleading.

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Deceptive Charts #2

20 November 2009

Last month I wrote about the dangers of secondary axes, but even charts with a single axis can be deceiving. I have been reflecting on this after reading Jon Peltier’s critique of Microsoft’s “professional” charting tutorials earlier this week. One of the charts Peltier takes issue with is a column chart which has the value [...]

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Hot and Dry Days Ahead for Australia

13 November 2009

Earlier this month, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology released the October figure for the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). It showed a precipitous plunge of almost 20 points down to -14.6. Just how significant a drop this is can be seen in the chart below, which shows the distribution of monthly changes in the SOI going [...]

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Petrol Price Update

21 October 2009

Oil prices have been heading up, but so has the Australian dollar. So, petrol prices in Sydney for October will have fallen since September.

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Is Australia taking its fair share of asylum-seekers?

16 October 2009

In Crikey this week, Bernard Keane made the point that Australia accepts a disproportionately small number of asylum-seekers given our population size. So, where exactly do we rank in the world in terms of generosity towards displaced persons? The United Nations Refugee Agency provides a wide range of statistics about refugees and asylum-seekers. The latest [...]

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Does Switzerland have the world’s best universities?

13 October 2009

Today @jgzebra drew my attention to the Times Higher Education league table of the top 200 univerities in the world. A quick glance at the list shows two US universities in the top three and six in the top 10. And indeed the United States dominates the results, claiming 54 spots out of the 200. [...]

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