Why not relative to population size? And China and USA should split into regions/states.
Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
11–20 of 75 posts
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#12Why all graphs are cummulative instead of new cases for that day? It's harder to notice how it is growing that way (i.e. more or less new cases than the previous days) and harder to see if it is going exponential, lineal or whatever. And, of course, forces to use log scales because the accumulated number is already high. At least for networking graphs is more meaningful to see difference from the actual from the prev…
Yeah I came by to say the same thing. I understand that "cumulative" and "dead" are super sensationalist, but what really matters isn't how many people have had it, but how many people have it right now and how that number's changing day by day. It's impossible to figure out and it makes this chart very misleading.
For instance, China's hovering around 10e5 cases on the chart, but they have 2e3. That's three orders of magnitude misleading, especially when 95-100% of people recover completely and are quite unlikely to get it again.
tl;dr: China features prominently on those graphs but their outbreak is contained and finished, they've re-opened internally and pollution (hence factory output) is returning to normal. The graph doesn't reflect that in a meaningful way. [1]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2020/03/22/video-wa...
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#13Why all graphs are cummulative instead of new cases for that day? It's harder to notice how it is growing that way (i.e. more or less new cases than the previous days) and harder to see if it is going exponential, lineal or whatever. And, of course, forces to use log scales because the accumulated number is already high. At least for networking graphs is more meaningful to see difference from the actual from the prev…
I'm not sure if the equation is right but I've done a daily case plot for Indian cases.
https://gist.github.com/theSage21/29608c666a378dcb276a9dd9e4...
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#14https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/ is a pretty cool related resource
Here's a quick video explaining those graphs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc
Log-Log graphs of new cases vs confirmed cases (which that graphs) is by far the best way to represent the data that I've seen.
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#15https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/ is a pretty cool related resource
Here's a quick video explaining those graphs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54XLXg4fYsc Log-Log graphs of new cases vs confirmed cases (which that graphs) is by far the best way to represent the data that I've seen.
Agreed that's much better, and addresses all the concerns in my sister post. Thanks for sharing!
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#16Why all graphs are cummulative instead of new cases for that day? It's harder to notice how it is growing that way (i.e. more or less new cases than the previous days) and harder to see if it is going exponential, lineal or whatever. And, of course, forces to use log scales because the accumulated number is already high. At least for networking graphs is more meaningful to see difference from the actual from the prev…
One reason is that daily increases are very volatile/noisy. The standard way to handle this is to use n-day moving averages, but they have a time lag and are harder to interpret.
Financial Times has the best graphical trackers I've seen. They used to show cumulative counts, but switched to 7-day moving averages of daily increases" recently.
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
I agree that displaying increases/growth rates are more informative overall, but it does take more time to understand the metrics. (Just compare the descriptions: "Total Deaths" vs "7-day moving average of daily increase in Total Deaths")
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#17Thanks, those log-scale plots are way more interesting than linear one.
Small mistake: Israel isn't in Europe but in Eastern Mediterranean.
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#18Why all graphs are cummulative instead of new cases for that day? It's harder to notice how it is growing that way (i.e. more or less new cases than the previous days) and harder to see if it is going exponential, lineal or whatever. And, of course, forces to use log scales because the accumulated number is already high. At least for networking graphs is more meaningful to see difference from the actual from the prev…
Daily numbers have problems too, they can get quite noisy. Both have their uses, particularly seen together. I also think linear scales have their place alongside log (which can be hard for laypeople to grasp). Here are daily numbers for France for example:
https://coronavirus.projectpage.app/france?period=28
The jump recently is due to a change in reporting to include deaths outside hospital (something most countries have yet to do), and these are reported deaths not actual, and subject to all kinds of caveats. Reported cases is even worse. Recovered cases is worst of all and not being properly tracked in most areas.
A moving average of daily cases might be best. I think the ft (who have nice graphs of this along with commentary) are moving toward this.
https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
There's a nice commentary on what they're doing here:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1246184639540...
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#19Why all graphs are cummulative instead of new cases for that day? It's harder to notice how it is growing that way (i.e. more or less new cases than the previous days) and harder to see if it is going exponential, lineal or whatever. And, of course, forces to use log scales because the accumulated number is already high. At least for networking graphs is more meaningful to see difference from the actual from the prev…
One reason is that daily increases are very volatile/noisy. The standard way to handle this is to use n-day moving averages, but they have a time lag and are harder to interpret. Financial Times has the best graphical trackers I've seen. They used to show cumulative counts, but switched to 7-day moving averages of daily increases" recently. https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest I agree that displaying increases/growt…
Not really. Data for Spain can be perfectly used and fit without averages on daily increases => https://media-exp1.licdn.com/dms/image/C5622AQH1JmaVMs3mqQ/f...
Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots
#20Thanks, those log-scale plots are way more interesting than linear one. Small mistake: Israel isn't in Europe but in Eastern Mediterranean.
the region titles are ... unconventional. greece, clearly in the eastern mediterraneon, is not listed, while iran on the indian ocean is. this group is normally called mena, roughly.
likewise, the category called southeast asia contains countries normally considered to be south asian - like india - and omits the larger part of southeast asia.
the creation of “western pacific”, grouping australia-new zealand, east asia, and the larger part of southeast asia, deserves credit surely since it is far more useful than the neocolonialist category of oceania, which mostly serves to allow europeans to swamp pacific islanders with statistics from australia