ST104: Statistical Laboratory WARWICK

Lecture 10
Samuel Touchard
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Misleading Graphs & Tables

Criticism Checklist
I What does a figure of this kind show?
I What is the context of this figure?
I What does this figure show in this specific case?
I What is good/bad about this way of displaying data?
I Is sensible scale used?
I Is graph clearly labelled?
I Does visual perception represent data fairly?

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Oxford railway station, 2013

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Oxford railway station, 2013

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Oxford railway station, 2013

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Ticket Prices By Sport

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More On Size

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Canadian School Leavers

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Canadian Taxes

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Canadian Cancer

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Californian Voting Rates

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Californian Voting Rates Cont.

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Baselines

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Baselines: Effect On Slope

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Worst Baselines Ever!

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Graphical Summaries Conclusion

I What does a figure of this kind show?

I What does the figure show for this data?
I Does the figure distort data?
I What does the figure not show (e.g. scales, baseline, missing data)
I Who displayed this data, and for what reason?

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Overplotting
Problems when lots of points lie on top of each other. Introduce tiny errors to make each point
stand out.

Can also use colour-coding/plot most dense groups first.

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Getting Around Overplotting

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Tabular Summaries

I Are the main/interesting features highlighted?

I Is it clear how to read table?
I Are numbers reported with sensible precision?

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Church Demographics

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