{"id":15970,"date":"2020-01-26T10:32:31","date_gmt":"2020-01-26T15:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/?p=15970"},"modified":"2020-01-26T10:32:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T15:32:37","slug":"a-bad-scene-a-worse-infographic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/26\/a-bad-scene-a-worse-infographic\/","title":{"rendered":"a bad scene, a worse infographic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CBC says that Alberta’s looming multibillion-dollar orphan wells problem prompts auditor general probe<\/a>. I mean, I’d say it does: estimated costs to clean up abandoned petrochemical wells outstrip the industry cleanup fund by over 132\u00c3\u2014, so it’s gone way past looming and is well into omnishambles country. But I’m not here to talk about the environmental mismanagement (well, not much: lol<\/em>Redwater<\/a> \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6), but more to talk about CBC’s terrible infographic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Total estimated liabilities: $30.1 billion; Total security held: $227 million. It doesn’t take Wilkins Micawber to tell you that the result is misery<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The image is accurate, technically. The estimated liabilities ($30100000000) are 132.6\u00c3\u2014 the total security held ($227000000), and the red square’s length is 11\u00c2\u00bd\u00c3\u2014 (= \u00e2\u02c6\u0161132.6) the blue one’s. But people are generally terrible at comparing areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the same numbers, but in bar chart form:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Alberta
They’re not even on the same page, are they?
(Graph badly put together by me in netpbm. Yes, netpbm<\/strong> \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And there’s the problem: it’s too big to comprehend. CBC’s comfortable little chart fits on a page; you can tweet it<\/a>, even. But reality is a whole lot of scrolling down the page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even the manky old pie chart would be better than CBC’s squares-by area:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Pie
Securities are a 2.69\u00c2\u00b0 wedge. Liabilities, the rest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At least pie charts used linear measure as a proportion of the full 360\u00c2\u00b0 pie. But comparing areas is hard<\/em>; in the diagram below, the teal-coloured part is twice the area of the gold part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"two
Confusing, isn’t it?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CBC says that Alberta’s looming multibillion-dollar orphan wells problem prompts auditor general probe. I mean, I’d say it does: estimated costs to clean up abandoned petrochemical wells outstrip the industry cleanup fund by over 132\u00c3\u2014, so it’s gone way past looming and is well into omnishambles country. But I’m not here to talk about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goatee-stroking-musing-or-something"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQNZZ-49A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15970"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15976,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15970\/revisions\/15976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scruss.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}