African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
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Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#2You have to love it when authors take scaling out of context in graphs. The vertical axis should most likely always start at zero.
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#3You have to love it when authors take scaling out of context in graphs. The vertical axis should most likely always start at zero.
Not sure that I agree here. I don't know about you, but my understanding of the variety of metrics they used in this article is quite minimal. Instead, it is instructive to just see the relative variation in the past five years or so compared to the 30 before that.
For instance, I have no idea what the metrics in Figs 2 and 3 are exactly, but I can see that the inequality metric in Figure 2 has reduced itself to approximately 1970 levels and that, since 1995, the welfare metric in Figure 3 has increased by (very roughly) twice the standard deviation of the past 30 years' measurements.
Of course scale is important, but it is folly to trot out the same argument every time a graph does not include the origin. Without knowing something about the y-axis variable we cannot make this type of claim.
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#4So does this mean religious charities will finally stop trying to guilt trip me with starving children when I'm trying to have a few drinks while watching television?
I didn't think so.
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#5You have to love it when authors take scaling out of context in graphs. The vertical axis should most likely always start at zero.
Not sure that I agree here. I don't know about you, but my understanding of the variety of metrics they used in this article is quite minimal. Instead, it is instructive to just see the relative variation in the past five years or so compared to the 30 before that. For instance, I have no idea what the metrics in Figs 2 and 3 are exactly, but I can see that the inequality metric in Figure 2 has reduced itself to appr…
If the meaning of the graphs isn't made clear, and the origin is not included (obscuring significance), it is not terribly unreasonably to suspect manipulation.
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#6This gives some hope, especially the Gini graph. I'll wait for more information to have a more definitive opinion though as autonomy is not always well captured in those quantitative data.
For example if more people live in big cities, is this growth enough ? (1$ can mean something different : in New York $400 certainly makes you poor…). Is this growth compensating former hidden markets, like self food producing and local non monetary exchanges ? (you can sell cotton and have more money, while still having it harder to buy food). Do their subsistance depend more or less on external factors like speculation ? Are there less wars/civil wars ?
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#7So does this mean religious charities will finally stop trying to guilt trip me with starving children when I'm trying to have a few drinks while watching television? I didn't think so.
Only because you can be sure of two things:
1) People who use guilt trips as a technique will always find new fodder with which to guilt trip you. They will never say "Oh, ok, that's been resolved so we're done now"
2) (Sadly,) There will always be a child starving somewhere
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#8You have to love it when authors take scaling out of context in graphs. The vertical axis should most likely always start at zero.
Not sure that I agree here. I don't know about you, but my understanding of the variety of metrics they used in this article is quite minimal. Instead, it is instructive to just see the relative variation in the past five years or so compared to the 30 before that. For instance, I have no idea what the metrics in Figs 2 and 3 are exactly, but I can see that the inequality metric in Figure 2 has reduced itself to appr…
I agree with you, kermit_de_fro, but it could be better. If the intent is to show relative changes, then it should show percentages or have a hard baseline that indicates "zero change".
I don't think "the bottom of the Y-axis isn't zero" is a guaranteed bad graph, especially considering some of the horrendous graphs out there. These ones are not that bad.
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#9When you're down, the only way is up.
Re: African poverty is falling…much faster than you think
#10So does this mean religious charities will finally stop trying to guilt trip me with starving children when I'm trying to have a few drinks while watching television? I didn't think so.
Only because you can be sure of two things: 1) People who use guilt trips as a technique will always find new fodder with which to guilt trip you. They will never say "Oh, ok, that's been resolved so we're done now" 2) (Sadly,) There will always be a child starving somewhere
I'm a strong supporter of help where you live. There are enough homeless and starving people within 50km of you that your money is guaranteed to get to and help, rather than send it half way around the world and hope your aid actually goes to someone in need rather than fall into the hands of a corrupt regime.
I'd prefer to give money to something like Child's Play for Toronto Sick Kids than give it to somewhere in Africa and I know many people will disagree with me for it, but IMO it sucks greater being the 1 in 100 kid that is gravely ill rather than the 1 in 2 kid that is starving. Throwing money at a norm isn't going to resolve it, but throwing money at the abnormal can indeed resolve it.
However, if you're an orangutan I'll donate to help you wherever you are - I like them much better than people.