Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#41

Post by em500 » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 12:44 PM UTC

jansan wrote: post #30

mrb wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree! Cumulative charts are less useful. For my charts, I represent new cases or new deaths per day. It shows such a clear picture of the trend of the growth: https://mobile.twitter.com/zorinaq/status/124578701743622144...

Do you have these charts for the main countries? From your chart it looks like Italy and Spain have reached the peak, US is still growing, Germany may be just about to peak. But it is hard to read.

The FT graphs show the increases/growths/1st-derivative. Italy and Spain are likely over peak-growth, Germany and France nearly, UK and US not yet. These are 7-day rolling averages, so there's roughly 3.5 days delay in the estimated signal.

https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#42

Post by stared » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

Pet peeve - line charts with many lines, yet legend in another place. Even worse, when the order of labels is not the same as the order of values. They take more cognitive power to parse than needed.

Compare and contrast with labels next to the lines, vide https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest (this example is already quoted in some other thread, and I find it a gold standard of coronavisualizations).

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#43

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

stared wrote: post #42

Pet peeve - line charts with many lines, yet legend in another place. Even worse, when the order of labels is not the same as the order of values. They take more cognitive power to parse than needed. Compare and contrast with labels next to the lines, vide https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest (this example is already quoted in some other thread, and I find it a gold standard of coronavisualizations).

To be fair to the FT, they have much better graphs than most other newspapers.

I especially like the small multiples by country with the gray lines for different countries (UK, Italy, Spain last I checked).

It's such a wonderful chart idea that I'm already planning on stealing it.

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#44

Post by koonsolo » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

These graphs give a bit of an indication, but you cannot really trust them.

Since there is a shortage on tests, at some point countries might decide to only test people coming into the hospital.

Another thing about the deaths is also troubling: In the Netherlands doctors were complaining that deaths with symptoms of Corona were not counted as corona deaths, because they were not tested and found positive (again a problem with the shortage of tests).

So a bending of the curve might just be explained by a new strategy of who to test.

I think the best way to count is to look at total hospitalizations, and subtract the average of normal years. And with corona deaths the same way: subtract the total with the average in a normal year.

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#45

Post by ryan_glass » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

It would be interesting to see graphs of deaths for other reasons to compare numbers. For example deaths from starvation/malnutrition are likely increasing in India due to lockdown (https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/mar/29/...) and deaths due to cancer may increase due to patients' treatment being missed.

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#46

Post by adventured » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #44

These graphs give a bit of an indication, but you cannot really trust them. Since there is a shortage on tests, at some point countries might decide to only test people coming into the hospital. Another thing about the deaths is also troubling: In the Netherlands doctors were complaining that deaths with symptoms of Corona were not counted as corona deaths, because they were not tested and found positive (again a pro…

It also needs per capita figures, which is dramatically more important than absolute figures, unless everyone happens to know the population figures of each country by memory.

You end up missing critical data points like the per 100k population mortality rates (from Friday morning):

New York 12, Louisiana 6.6, New Jersey 6, Michigan 4.2, Washington 3.5, Connecticut 3.1, Massachusetts 2.2, Colorado 1.7, Georgia 1.67, Nevada 1.27, Illinois 1.23, Delaware 1.2, Pennsylvania 0.7, Ohio 0.7, Florida 0.68, Kentucky 0.68, Alabama 0.65, South Carolina 0.6, Wisconsin 0.53, California 0.5, Oregon 0.5, Maine 0.5, Idaho 0.5, Virginia 0.48, Arizona 0.45, Kansas 0.44, New Hampshire 0.36, Iowa 0.34, New Mexico 0.33, Minnesota 0.32, Nebraska 0.32, Missouri 0.31, Texas 0.24, North Carolina 0.15, Hawaii 0.14

Italy 23, Spain 22, Belgium 8.8, France 8, the Netherlands 7.8, Switzerland 6.2, UK 4.5, Sweden 3, Denmark 2.1, Ireland 2, Portugal 2, Austria 1.8, Germany 1.3, Norway 0.9, Canada 0.37, Finland 0.34, Australia 0.11, New Zealand ~0

Most of the US is seeing very low per capita mortality rates and no surge in cases. You wouldn't know that by the headlines though.

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#47

Post by app4soft » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

FTR, There is simple Covid-19 plot utility for Ukraine data, but could be used for any other data set.[0]

[0] https://github.com/marianpetruk/covid19_Ukraine

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#48

Post by stared » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #43

stared wrote: post #42

Pet peeve - line charts with many lines, yet legend in another place. Even worse, when the order of labels is not the same as the order of values. They take more cognitive power to parse than needed. Compare and contrast with labels next to the lines, vide https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest (this example is already quoted in some other thread, and I find it a gold standard of coronavisualizations).

To be fair to the FT, they have much better graphs than most other newspapers. I especially like the small multiples by country with the gray lines for different countries (UK, Italy, Spain last I checked). It's such a wonderful chart idea that I'm already planning on stealing it.

The Economist has a good baseline for charts.

The New York Times has some stunning data visualizations (from the UI/UX perspective), see e.g. "You Draw It" series: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/15/us/politics/y...

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#49

Post by mercer » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

How does this compare to https://studylib.net/coronavirus-growth ?

Re: Show HN: Log-Scale Covid-19 Plots

#50

Post by analog31 » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 2:30 PM UTC

gmuslera wrote: post #10

Why 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…

For a while there, it made no difference. When cases are growing exponentially, the two graphs are proportional to one another. The cumulative graph made it easy to spot when a particular region or locality had gone exponential, which I took to indicate the onset of community spread.