Statistical Data Analysis and

Visualization

Practical Assignment 1

Paula Fernández Aldama: Nº exp. 314

Maria José Rimó Martínez: Nº expNº exp. 298
Álvaro González Berdasco: Nº exp. 291
Marta Fernández González: Nº exp. 306
 Figure 1 : Simple statistics

INTRODUCTION

The plot we have chosen comes from the news, on the economic front.The image appeared
on Ana Rosa's television program on the Telecinco channel on October 28th 2022, in which
the presenter talked about the publication of the October CPI (an indicator that measures
inflation), which had plummeted to 7.3%, marking the biggest drop since Spain's entry into
the euro and reaching values close to those prior to the start of the Ukrainian war.
Since the CPI is used as a measure of the evolution of goods and services consumed by
households, a decrease in its index is equivalent to a reduction in the cost of living in an
economy. Similarly, if the index increases, it means that more money is needed than before
to buy the same products, so purchasing power is lost. If inflation rises too much, we enter
hyperinflation; if it falls, deflation. Neither of these scenarios is desirable. The main
difference with inflation is that the latter measures the general price evolution, while the CPI
focuses on a specific number of goods.

Knowing this CPI data, the program presented a graph as shown in Figure 1, from which the
presenter commented on the good news.

Figure 1: Photo of the barplot that attempts to show the evolution of the CPI from January 2021 to October 2021
in Spain.
Source: This photo was taken during the presentation of the same program.

ANALYSIS

Analyzing the figure we came up with some obvious errors:

 - First, the title does not describe the situation represented. The object of the graph is
to compare the CPI evolution of October in relation to the previous months. A good
title would have been CPI Evolution through Months in Spain.

- Second, there is no legend, it is not a big error since they are only representing CPI,
but as October is in red since it is the month they are comparing with the rest, it may
induce an error.

- Third, even if there is an x-axis indicating the name of each month, we can see that
some bars are wider than others and there is nothing to explain why.

- Fourth, there is no y-axis label. This is tricky as the authors decided to put each value
over each bar of the plot. However, if we further analyze the y-values, we found
errors as October’s bar is equal to September’s bar while 8.9 > 7.3. If we look at the
other month’s values and bars, it is clear that the graph has been manipulated. We
can see this clearly in figure 2.

Figure 2: the same graph as before, edited by an internet user to show the manipulation of the graphs.

Since they are comparing October’s CPIwith the previous months, it would have been good
to perform a statistical analysis of the data that showed if the change is significant. In
addition, we have no indication of how meaningful it is to compare only these 10 months.
This graph alone does not give us an overall picture of how the CPI tends to behave.

On the other hand, the caption does not show where the data comes from.

Positive points: the barplot is visually attractive and simple. It is easy to see what they want
to emphasize in the graphic by changing the red color to blue.
 Figure 2 : Composite figue

INTRODUCTION

The following figure was taken from a recent article titled Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic
on Mental Health among 157,213 Americans. COVID-19 health crisis forced almost half of
humanity to remain in confinement. We have all experienced this pandemic and know what it
can do to the mental health of many people. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe
impact on the mental health and well-being of people around the world.

The authors’ purpose was to analyze how certain emotions of US citizens evolved during the
first stages of the coronavirus pandemic. They also elaborated some previous hypotheses
such as an initial increase of anxiety and depression’s symptoms, combined with a gradual
increase of other negative emotions and a decrease of positive emotions. During the last
months of the pandemic, improvements on general mood were expected.

In order to accomplish their objectives, the authors collected the data from a health data
application called Youper. In this app, users are able to complete several tasks regarding
their mental state (mood rating, meditation, etc). Symptoms of depression and anxiety were
measured with the help of specialized questionnaires (PHQ-9 and GAD-7).

We will make a brief analysis of one of the main results of this article, which is the following
figure:
Figure 1. Changes in Acute (A) Negative Emotions and (B) Positive Emotions During the Pandemic
Note. Positive and negative emotions during the pre, acute and sustained time periods of the pandemic from first
interactions of Youper app users. Displayed timelines are given in percent of all reported emotions and are
seven-day rolling averages.

ANALYSIS

Negative points:

- On the x axis, it is not specified what is represented. They appear to be dates but
could actually be other types of numbers. Also, if we refer to the date, we should
comment in what format it is, since it differs from one country to another.

- The lines used to represent the percentage variation of the different emotions are
confusing. Each has a different pattern to differentiate it from the others but it is
complicated when viewed together on the graph. Conversely, different distinct colors
could have been chosen to represent each emotion.
 - The division between ‘Pre’, ‘Acute’ and ‘Sustained’ stages is not defined either in the
figure or the article. We find it important to know when and based on what this
differentiation was made.

Positive points:

- The caption is brief and concise, the explanation is not lengthy as the figure is later
discussed.

- Plotting negative and positive emotions apart from each other. This way is easier for
us to understand the graphs, as we could suppose that all negative feelings would
evolve in a similar way and positive feelings would do it as well.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

- https://www.publico.es/tremending/2022/10/31/graficas-manipuladas-vs-la-realidad-in
dignacion-por-otro-error-en-el-programa-de-ana-rosa-ahora-con-el-CPI/
- https://www.elplural.com/economia/nueva-pugna-entre-sindicatos-patronal-por-datos-
IPC_301201102
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032721001907