The Public Do Not Understand Logarithmic Graphs Used To Portray COVID-19 (lse.ac.uk) 349
Mass media routinely portray information about COVID-19 deaths on logarithmic graphs. But do their readers understand them? Alessandro Romano, Chiara Sotis, Goran Dominioni, and Sebastian Guidi carried out an experiment which suggests that they don't. From a report: The fact that the framing of information can dramatically alter how we react to it will hardly surprise any reader of this blog. Incidentally, the canonical example of framing effects involves an epidemic: a disease that kills 200 out of 600 people is considered worse than one in which 400 people survive. Whereas this imaginary epidemic was just a thought experiment, an actual global pandemic turns out to be an unfortunate laboratory for framing effects. In a recent experiment, we show how framing crucially affects people's responses to one of the most important building blocks of the COVID-19 informational puzzle: the number of deaths. We show that the logarithmic scale graphs that the media routinely use to display this information are poorly understood by the public and affect people's attitudes and policy preferences towards the pandemic. This finding has important implications because during a pandemic, even more than usually, the public depends on the media to convey understandable information in order to make informed decisions regarding health-protective behaviours.
Many media outlets portray information about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths using a logarithmic scale graph. At first sight, this seems sensible. In fact, many of them defend their decision by showing how much better these charts are in conveying information about the exponential nature of the contagion. For history lovers, the popular economist Irving Fisher also believed this, which led him to strongly advocate for their use in 1917 (right before the Spanish Flu rendered them tragically relevant). Fisher was ecstatic about this scale: "When one is once accustomed to it, it never misleads." It turns out, however, that even specialized scientists don't get used to it. Not surprisingly, neither does the general public. We conducted a between-subjects experiment to test whether people had a better understanding of graphs in a logarithmic or in a linear scale, and whether the scale in which the chart is shown affects their level of worry and their policy preferences. Half of our n=2000 sample of US residents was shown the progression of COVID-19 related deaths in the US at the time of the survey plotted on a logarithmic scale. The other half received exactly the same information -- this time plotted on a good old linear scale. [...]
Many media outlets portray information about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths using a logarithmic scale graph. At first sight, this seems sensible. In fact, many of them defend their decision by showing how much better these charts are in conveying information about the exponential nature of the contagion. For history lovers, the popular economist Irving Fisher also believed this, which led him to strongly advocate for their use in 1917 (right before the Spanish Flu rendered them tragically relevant). Fisher was ecstatic about this scale: "When one is once accustomed to it, it never misleads." It turns out, however, that even specialized scientists don't get used to it. Not surprisingly, neither does the general public. We conducted a between-subjects experiment to test whether people had a better understanding of graphs in a logarithmic or in a linear scale, and whether the scale in which the chart is shown affects their level of worry and their policy preferences. Half of our n=2000 sample of US residents was shown the progression of COVID-19 related deaths in the US at the time of the survey plotted on a logarithmic scale. The other half received exactly the same information -- this time plotted on a good old linear scale. [...]
Why A&W's 1/3 pound burger was a flop (Score:5, Interesting)
A&W wanted to one up the Quarter Pounder, so they introduced the 1/3 Pound Burger back in the early '80s. Sales were abysmal. In customer surveys, the most frequent response was "why would I pay more for a smaller burger? Three is less than four, right?"
Basic numeracy is sadly lacking, expecting the public to understand log scales is completely naive.
Re:Why A&W's 1/3 pound burger was a flop (Score:5, Interesting)
About 20 years ago, I worked for a telco and we tried to offer less-expensive phone lines with all surcharges included in one flat price. Competition advertised $26 phone lines... and with surcharges, they came out to about $45. We offered a flat $40 per line with all surcharges included.
No one bought our lines. When we asked, customers always said 'but $26 is less than $40'. We tried to explain about all the other charges, but it never sunk in. So we advertised our lines as $24 plus surcharges (which often added up to *more* than $40) and we sold a ton of them.
Re:Why A&W's 1/3 pound burger was a flop (Score:5, Insightful)
No one bought our lines. When we asked, customers always said 'but $26 is less than $40'. We tried to explain about all the other charges, but it never sunk in. So we advertised our lines as $24 plus surcharges (which often added up to *more* than $40) and we sold a ton of them.
This is the perfect example of why non-predatory companies want regulation. If you try to do the right thing but people only support predatory companies which are defrauding their customers, the free market rarely works. Or it takes so long to work that the competition has gone bankrupt and new predatory companies have sprung up to collect the people slowly catching on.
A minimum wage means we can pay a reasonable wage to employees without our next door competitor swooping in and underbidding us on everything. Environmental regulations mean we can competitively sell product and not dump the waste down the storm drain poisoning people and hope nobody notices.
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If you try to do the right thing but people only support predatory companies which are defrauding their customers, the free market rarely works
There are several assumptions in free market theory. One of which is complete information. Predatory companies withholding pricing information is a violation the basic assumptions of free market economics, and warrants government regulation.
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Most of the retail sector operates on similar principles. Market your product as 20% off and customers feel that they got a bargain, even though the 20% off offer never ends.
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"Math is hard!" - Barbie
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500 dollars, that's like five thousand cents, right?
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US education is _this_ bad now? Fascinating.
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Le 113.3981 grammes avec fromage?
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A 1/6 kg burger sounds so much smaller than a 1/7kg burger. After all, 6 is less than 7.
Really, your point is that fractions are bad and the correct units matter. A 4 oz burger really is less than a 5.3 oz burger, and it lines up with (idiots') expectations.
Burgers in Europe are typically 200g, which is a lot bigger both in numbers and in reality.
Re:Why A&W's 1/3 pound burger was a flop (Score:4, Informative)
Well in defense, humans have linear brains.
Some parts, maybe. Vision, for example though, is definitely logarithmic. The difference between something being 1000 meters away and being 1010 meters away from you would be barely perceptible, if at all, but the difference between 1 meter and 2 meters is easy to see.
Re:Why A&W's 1/3 pound burger was a flop (Score:5, Informative)
Vision is logarithmic so our linear brains don't have to work too hard. When I'm teaching people astrophotography I get them to take a picture of the moon, guessing the exposure. Nobody gets it right. The moon looks a little brighter than the stars and planets, a little brighter than the moonlit landscape. But it's not. It's a *lot* brighter.
The room I'm sitting in looks almost as bright as the sunlit outside. But it's not. It's a couple orders of magnitude dimmer.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why A&W's 1/3 pound burger was a flop (Score:4, Funny)
Last time I was out I stuck the camera on the telescope and pointed it at the moon with the live view on. One of the people I was with looked at the screen on the camera and said "is it *moving*??"
It is pretty cool to see.
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Well, that explains why I ate a whole box of cookies while watching YouTube instead of making a proper dinner to eat while watching something on Netflix.
Thanks!
I don't think I would either (Score:5, Interesting)
Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that they endlessly use absolute numbers of deaths between countries when trying to claim comparisons is orders of magnitude ( ;) ) worse..
Seriously, the number of graphs with a bunch of countries charted with absolute number of deaths and/or infections, and we are supposed to be grabbed by some 'meaning' in it, when often the populations are different by an order of magnitude or more.
Then there is the complete lack of context to where the numbers sit in comparison to other causes of death. Of course every single avoidable death is bad, but hey, where are the global shutdowns for HIV, for normal flu... Hell, banning smoking and alcohol would probably save more lives - but that is certainly not done.
Context IS desperately needed, however apparently we are too dumb to understand it, or perhaps it would just get in the way of 'the message'
So yes, people don't understand logarithmic graphs, but that is hardly the primary problem here.
Re: Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, in Georgia they got caught putting days in different order on graphs to show downward trends. The graph would go from May, to April, and back to May
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That’s not lying with statistics... it’s just flat out lying.
Re: Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Informative)
Here you go. https://www.businessinsider.com/graph-shows-georgia-bungling-coronavirus-data-2020-5 [businessinsider.com]
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Holy crap. https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/... [twitter.com] that graph!! It's like someone tried to graph something only to have the internet put the X axis through a random number generator.
Re: Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Informative)
It went in this order:
April 28
April 27
April 29
May 01
April 30
May 04
May 06
May 05
May 02
May 07
April 26
May 03
May 08
May 09.
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The problem is assholes who think some abstract notion of "the economy" is more important than lives. Here's the thing, bud. We have records from 1918. We know what works and what doesn't in a pandemic. Counties that stayed locked down longer recovered quicker, economically. It's a simple fact: dead people don't buy goods and services. You can put people back on the job, but more will die and the ones who survive will be scared for longer, not out actually buying goods and services.
Just remember folks, when
Re:Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems that lockdown meant something different [bbc.com] back then. Public walks, bars and restaurants and churches still open, no changes in work spaces, etc.
As far as the economy, it IS jobs. If you were a barber - you haven't made a dime for 2 months (and pushing for 3 more, if you're in Los Angeles). That pretty much bankrupts anyone. Saying "it's just stocks" is pretty rude and dismissive of millions of small and independent businesses and workers.
Re:Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Insightful)
People like spun are javascript programmers who make 100k working from home. They don't know, or have empathy, for people who have actual jobs.
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Turns out you don't care after all (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is assholes who think some abstract notion of "the economy" is more important than lives
The problem is assholes who think losing 30+ million jobs is fine, while implementing questionable changes that hardly save any lives.
You claim to care about lives, but in the end it turns out not really because you are willing to destroy lives after the data shows clearly what you are doing is not really saving very many people over doing nothing.
If we had locked down the nursing homes and totally isolated them, and did no other shutdowns the NYC COVID death rate alone would be something like 80% of the current total.
All without losing 30 million jobs...
I mean really, why do you not care about 30 million people losing work? That to me is truly baffling. I myself care about both - I wanted to see deaths minimized, but I ALSO realize the effect of that many people losing jobs is equally as destructive to society as a whole.
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If we had locked down the nursing homes and totally isolated them, and did no other shutdowns the NYC COVID death rate alone would be something like 80% of the current total.
This is not true, the hospitals would have been overwhelmed.
Re:Turns out you don't care after all (Score:5, Insightful)
> We were told it 250k US deaths minimum by May even with the lockdown, 2+ million without. Here we are almost June and it still hasn't hit 100k.
Well, in fairness, that's vastly better than the other way around.
In case you forget, we had Northern Italy as a fairly graphic example of how things could go south very, very quickly.
And as for the economy, that was going to grind to a halt one way or another. If the country-side didn't lock down, there'd have been enough migration from infected zones to ensure they were hit as well, but usually with worse healthcare access.
Or has been widely pointed out, you can have the economy close down because people engage in widespread social distancing (much of the world, including Sweden) or you can have massive waves of illness and then the economy closes down because everyone is cowering in their homes, except vital services are closed as well.
To be honest, only the Americans could make COVID-19 a culture war issue.
Re: You don't understand reality (Score:3)
They why were the emergency field hospitals unused? The hospital ship? The Javitts Center?
NYC never ran out of hospital beds ventilators. They closed the emergency beds and are shipping excess ventilators to other locations.
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They why were the emergency field hospitals unused? The hospital ship? The Javitts Center?
Because the lockdown worked. This is all unsurprising to someone who understands exponential growth. Here's a graph that shows deaths in New York [imgur.com]. You can clearly see when Coronavirus hit, and you can clearly see when the lockdown began having a result.
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And in other countries that didn't fully go into lockdown Armageddon failed to happen there too.
Which country are you talking about here? Every country that has not taken mitigation measures against COVID has seen unmitigated spread of COVID. Countries that have taken measures have seen the decline of the spread, largely in proportion to the effectiveness of the measures.
I would expect that in hindsight the "cure" will be found to be far worse than the disease in terms of trading a smaller number of covid deaths for more suicides, homelessness, and general misery,
No, here you're wrong. I'm sure someone told you that, but if you had looked at actual numbers, you would find that COVID is more dangerous.
Re:Turns out you don't care after all (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, in civilized countries the governments stepped in and made sure that these businesses survive. But it seems in the US, to get bailed out you have to be too big to fail ... and make relevant bribes to your relevant political whores.
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Well, it sure isn't working out for Sweden. https://nationalpost.com/news/... [nationalpost.com]
Where I am, the government is helping those barbers and their workers with money and help with the rent. It's costing, with borrowing close to what America was borrowing before the pandemic. Seems America would rather support the stock market rather then workers.
Re:Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Interesting)
"“A week ago I laughed at the idea of the mask,“ John A. Britton told a reporter. “I wanted to be independent. I did not realize that the cost of such independence was the lives of others.”
--Some guy in 1918
Re:Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Funny)
people keep saying ths but where is the data on the undead?
Re:Not the largest problem.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there is the complete lack of context to where the numbers sit in comparison to other causes of death.
No, there is not. The original mantra was, "It's not as bad as the flu". Then people started using other examples of death such as heart disease, car accidents and smoking. Here's one for you. If covid-19 was a war, it would be the fourth deadliest for Americans.
Hell, banning smoking and alcohol would probably save more lives - but that is certainly not done.
Those involve choices people make. You can choose not to smoke. You can choose not to drink. You don't choose whether or not to get infected with covid-19.
Further, just because you smoke does not mean there is any large chance I will smoke. The same with drinking. If you get infected with covid-19 there is a large chance you will infect someone else.
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This is probably why drinking is legal and drunk driving isn't.
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Just this morning Stanford released a study that says it's not as bad as the flu: https://spectator.us/stanford-... [spectator.us]
No it doesn't. It says the mortality rate may be lower (so it's less "deadly" on an individual level). "as bad as" assumes everything else is equal. But they're not; C-19 spreads more easily. That makes it more deadly at the bulk level, especially in confined areas like ships and care homes but extending right up to the level of a country.
It also closes with a suggestion that, actually, the Standford study might not match what has been seen in Spain.
So, by and large, your conclusion that this is all about p
Another bigger problem (Score:2)
Attempts to outright lie to push a more sensational headline to generate web site traffic and ad revenue.
Example of a desired narrative [dailymail.co.uk] ("COVID infections are getting worse in the United States") was out there on The Daily Mail last week. We're talking grade school level deception - but hey, it looks like exponential growth and DANGER...
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So here you are complaining about a lack of scientific literacy and then you go and write "where are the global shutdowns for HIV, for normal flu", and you get marked insightful. I mean, jesus fucking wept. How ignorant can you possibly be? The reason this is not worse than a typical flu season or the HIV pandemic is *because* there has been a lockdown. If it's already passed through the population, and killed a quarter of the over-70s and lots of the rest of us too, it's a bit fucking late for a lockdown,
Plans for re-opening (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found when I show people charts like this one [imgur.com], that show a well-thought-out plan for re-opening, it calms them down and gets them out of their conspiratorial ways of thinking.
We have techniques we can use to start the economy again without killing 1% of the population, and people need to know that.
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I've also found that communication has been really lacking around re-opening. All those protestors seem to think that the plan is to be locked down for a long, long time.
I can't imagine where they'd get that idea from... https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09... [cnn.com] https://www.foxnews.com/scienc... [foxnews.com] https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com] https://www.yourlocalguardian.... [yourlocalguardian.co.uk]
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This is what happens when we go from "the press" to "the media". Once upon a time a newspaper or major TV or radio outlet would have a "science reporter", a journalist with some background and understanding of science, a "business reporter" with some background in business, etc. Now the primary requirement to be a "reporter" is to look good on camera and be able to read a corporate press release as though it were actual news. /rant
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"Yes, or then again, perhaps no" - according to Groucho Marx (or maybe W C Fields, I forget).
Differentbscales on different axies (Score:2)
Hardly surprising (Score:2, Insightful)
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I would go so far as to argue that the media should NOT be showing logarithmic graphs to the general public, unless their intent is to mislead.
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If you present logarithmic data on a linear graph the public will be equally misled, as will actual experts. It is graphed differently in order to actually get meaning out of data that otherwise looks like a vertical line.
If the intent is to convey information that only a logarithmic scale can represent to the general public, you've misjudged your audience by an order of magnitude.
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not "logarithmic data". There's no such thing. A logarithm is a mathematical function.
It's not misleading that it looks like a vertical line. That's the reality.
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Logarithmic graphs are not, if you don't read the fine print it's very easy to interpret them wrong.
By "fine print" you mean looking at the scale? It sounds like the only thing you're interested in if you ignore that "fine print" is up or down, in which case either logarithmic or linear will do the job for you just fine. There's nothing "intuitive" about reading logarithmic data on a linear graph which is why they invented the damn logarithmic graph in the first place. TFA makes that point nicely, on the linear graph presented it looks as though Italy and USA are trending identically, but that graph counter to your assertion actually isn't intuitive given the data presented on it.
In much of the world we teach kids the importance of labeling their axis and deduct points if its not done correctly, is that not part of common core maths?
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That fine print is called the scale. Yes, you actually have to read a graph, you can't just look at the pretty picture.
And yes, if you want to compare growth rates, a logarithmic scale is actually more useful because when you're dealing with exponential growth it can far better display the difference in magnitude.
Show daily new cases (Score:2)
The scale is not very important here. Showing cumulative deaths or cumulative cases is not informative in assessing the dynamics. Also, registered deaths lag the infections by 2-3 weeks. Daily new cases should have been used.
Imagine a world ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine a world where a majority of voters are borderline illiterate.
Now here's the twist, they don't even know they are illiterate.
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I don't have to imagine that world. If we take functional illiteracy (basically, people can read but do not understand what they read), we are living in that world.
The Media do not understand log graphs (Score:2)
That's only because most people don't have.... (Score:3)
But to be fair, I find that looking at a logarithmic graph with only one curve on it is not nearly as useful as looking at a logarithmic graph that compares several curves which might have different orders of magnitude.
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Or of exponential growth. That is why most people do not understand that on something like Covid-19, a week or two can be the difference between the medical system still works and everything collapses. Or that a timely response in retrospect makes a safely avoided catastrophe look pretty harmless.
Surprised? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why so many (9!) links in the summary!? (Score:2)
Ok, I never got the purpose of this - when I read an actual article, I expect there to be links to point to additional context about the subject at hand the article discusses (usually within that paragraph), as an "see this for additional info, but not required".
But in a summary about an article or story? WTAF?! I don't even know which one of the nine links in this summary is the 'main' one to go to...
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This is really getting annoying
After a bunch of totally not nerdy articles, we, slashdotters (science guys around, probably almost famous in our 10+ people circles) finally get an article where we can make fun of dumber than us people that don't understand logarithmic scales
I was almost thinking about actually getting up to grab the pop corn but then, WTF ? 9 links ? wait, what was the topic about ? I can't even imagine how non older slashdotters not yet trained to not fol
That and... (Score:2)
Itâ(TM)s probably something that those who made the graphs have little understanding of as well.
Watch the video (Score:2)
Mount Stupid ... (Score:2)
People also don't understand large numbers (Score:2)
All the best conspiracy theories at the moment seem to involve believing "the media" is "exaggerating" the problem. "If a million people have this, how come I don't know nobody who got it? This is just some bullshit". In a country of 330M, odds are still that you don't know anyone who has it, unless you are just a very social person. But odds are also that you have visited a place a sick person has been through at least once in the past few weeks. That's why you should care anyway.
Try with... (Score:3)
a better title would be: (Score:2)
it is often used for such purposes too (not covid, other things).
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logarithmic scale is deceiving.
it is often used for such purposes too (not covid, other things).
Bullshit. Only somebody utterly deranged would see a log-scale plot as a deception. It is merely a different way to display things. For an exponential phenomenon (and an epidemic is very much that), it is the natural scale for things.
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Only somebody utterly deranged would see a log-scale plot as a deception
I don't think you've been paying attention. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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No, I can actually read graphs, whether linear or log-scale. Linear is wrong here or only useful as additional graph.
Sure, the general public reading data aimed at scientists and misunderstanding them is a problem, but in only becomes deception when it is not labelled correctly. (Of course, it needs to be labelled correctly, why is that even a question? Anything not labelled clearly is a problem, that is not limited to log-scale at all.) For experts, these log-scale plots are helpful and needed. A non-expe
The public does understand barely anything (Score:2)
It really does not matter whether they learned it at school either. People go with emotion and with what they want to see. They (with rare exceptions, which usually turn out to be the 10-15% independent thinkers) are not interested in facts and do not even understand what a fact is. They think the world works how they want it to work. Many are even willing to apply violence to anybody and anything that threaten their fantasies of how things are.
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It's worse than that. When confronted with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, people generally not only hold onto those beliefs, but they strengthen them.
Every presentation is misleading in some way. (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the problem with linear scale graphs is that the largest number represented on the graph dominates your impression, which can be misleading.
Suppose I'm plotting COVID-19 cases for two states, A and B, during the initial exponential phase of the epidemic when cases are roughly doubling every four days. The graph is dominated by the biggest number on the graph -- say the latest number of cases from A. I might look at the graph and conclude the problem is much smaller in B, which is *accurate*, but *misleading*. It's possible that A and B are following exactly the same trajectory, but A simply got started a week earlier than B.
A logarithmic scale would make that much clearer. But it *is* misleading about the relative size of the problem *right now*.
The answer is, you look at *both*. In fact, you look at as many different *kinds* of visualizations of the data as possible, with different independent variables too.
Scientists don't understand people (Score:3)
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It's not the average person's fault for not understanding logarithmic scales.
In a country with free public education that pushes universal literacy, and covers the relevant math for 3-6 years in a row?
Sounds like a set of individual choices.
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It's not the average person's fault for not understanding logarithmic scales. It's the presenter's fault for not understanding how to effectively communicate to the lay populace.
It's both. No one would ever brag about being illiterate yet being mathematically so is a point of pride for many. If you have such an attitude it is 100% your fault.
Average Return Interval (Score:2)
Innumeracy is pretty much... (Score:3)
... *always* a sure bet.
That's how casinos work.
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Your comment looks like propaganda saying "My ignorance is equal to your knowledge." Now, which particular experts do you have a problem with? Let me guess. Climate scientists. And, at least since February, doctors.
Did I guess right?
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm thinking about it wrong, but does logarithmic stuff make any sense at all for public facing Covid graphs? Seems to me like that kind of scale makes goods sense with things like decibels, because three people talking (over each other) is not really experienced as being three times as intense as one person talking. But deaths? Seems like the opposite would be true. It doesn't seem stupid to me that a gently sloping death curve is less intense looking than a hockey stick death curve. I crazy here?
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So fucking what. That's like asking the general public to be expert computer users before connecting their box to the Internet. It's not going to happen.
It doesn't matter that a logarithmic scale makes sense since the point is to present the data to the general public. We still have people who actually believe dihydrogen monoxide is dangerous.
Do they even say the graphics being shown are on a logarithmic scale? Do they do it every single time?
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is patently false.
Don't get me wrong, I think that the "lockdown" of everyone is the wrong way to blunt the effects of this virus, especially since there is no way we can get anything close to a lockdown in this country, even if we didn't make explicit so many "essential business" type loopholes. We should have jumped at test, trace, and isolate at the beginning, but instead we just said "no problem" because there were not yet many cases. That is a classic case of not understanding the potential of exponential growth. Even now, there definitely should be more targeted quarantines, but I have no hope that most people in the US would follow those, either.
Some of the places with the highest rates of infection per capita are rural. Maybe you should also be reminded that a lot of nursing homes, prisons, meat packing factories, etc. are located in rural counties.
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No it is not
99% of the world's population think "Libertarian" means fuck-wit.
Re:In other news... (Score:4, Informative)
First you are completely wrong, there was no shift as you claim in March which changed understanding of who was most at risk. It was known very early on that the elderly were most at risk. Social distancing was and still is primarily intended to prevent surges on the hospital system, which still can happen.
Second exactly how do you isolate nursing home patients without exposing them to nursing home workers? What exactly do you propose should be done with them?
Third, COVID-19 infection and death rates are at this point increasing faster in rural areas than urban. When this is over, anyone who looks around and says
"no-one they know ever got covid19" will probably just be people who don't know many other people.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
What an extraordinary amount of words just to demonstrate your ignorance.
1. "The doctors". What the fuck are "the doctors"? As though they're any kind of homogenous mass. Tell you what, if you've got such a problem with them, don't use them when you start suffering from cancer, arthritis, CVD, COPD, etc etc. Treat it yourself and see how you get on, you self-aggrandising twat.
2. The correct policy approach, from the start, remains as it always has been, best summed up by the NZ phrase: "we go early, we go hard". This has absolutely nothing to do with the correlation of age with mortality, which was obvious in February, and instead has everything to do with the fact that R is inherently well above 1 for this virus and fatality rates when unchecked are unacceptably high. Catch it early, stamp it out, lock it down fast and thoroughly, and you avoid the deaths and come out of lockdown faster.
3. As always with public health, to the extent it succeeds, people kid themselves it wasn't needed in the first place.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Informative)
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Hey, one of the first things you learn in writing class is to write for your audience.
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Re:Never, ever, use a logarithmic graph.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Never, ever, use a logarithmic graph.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. And that applies to a lot of other things. Like, for example, exponential growth of some contagious infection.
Re: (Score:3)
It tells *a* story, but it only tells *one* story. That's the whole problem. Yes, a log chart can show that the rate of increase is decreasing. But it can also obscure the fact that this has come at the price of 100k more deaths. Because 10k to 100k is no different to the eye than 1k to 10k. People make this mistake all the time when looking at log graphs.
Disagree (Score:2)
The only thing a logarithmic graph is good for is to help convey the *rate* of increase or decrease in a small, square graph.
Fixed that for you. Admittedly, I have had to explain the log graph at this COVID-19 data site [arcgis.com]. But log graphs are great for small spaces. Try and visually represent exponential growth in a reasonably publishable manner (something square).
and the first-order derivative does a much better job.
I wouldn't say that throwing calculus terms/concepts at regular people is gonna do a much b
Re: (Score:2)
What kind of bullshit is that? I found the log-scale graph a lot more clear than the linear one. Maybe because I am a scientist and the John Hopkins people are too? The problem here is people reading the log-scale plot that are not equipped to understand it. If you think that is the fault of the ones publishing the data, do you advocate censorship of scientific results in other areas as well?
Re: (Score:3)
to convey the importance of anything. They are misleading at best, downright dangerous at worst. They are a shorthand way to compact the y-axis so it 'fits'. The problem is that compaction makes comparison between adjacent columns difficult to perform.
How the heck did this get modded up on Slashdot of all places. There's nothing misleading about logarithmic data on a logarithmic graph. It's not some shorthand, it's not some compression, and it doesn't make comparison difficult.
Quite the opposite. It gets around the very real problem that when logarithmic data is plotted on a linear scale it essentially becomes incomparable garbage.
WHY AM I EXPLAINING THIS HERE! This is news for nerds, but somehow people here seem to think this is "news for people who fai
Re:Never, ever, use a logarithmic graph.... (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously? Log-scale is the natural way to plot an exponential phenomenon. You know, like an infectious disease spreading or the like. There is _absolutely_ _nothing_ obsolete about them.