Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How do people in different countries spend their time?

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–25 of 25 posts

Re: How do people in different countries spend their time?

#21

Post by igrekel »

silentbicycle wrote: post #16

Among other complaints (pie charts?), it seems odd that "eating / sleeping" are combined. Seeing each individually would be far more useful. The actual report (not the Economist summary) has better graphs and more info, though - perhaps that should have been linked instead?

I can't support this enough. The economist's summary had me just saying "so what", but after reading this comment I started looking at the actual report and I must say it is much much more interesting.

http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_34637_2671576...

Re: How do people in different countries spend their time?

#22

Post by zipdog »

mkuhn wrote: post #5
Jach wrote: post #3

They all look mostly the same, sure the French spend nearly double the time on "Personal Care" as Americans but when you're talking about 0.7 hours vs. 1.3 hours that's really not a big difference. I'd be a lot more interested in countries like Russia, China, and various places in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. More precise age groups would also be interesting.

I think the number on "Paid work and study" had quite significant differences (Japan 6.3, Germany 3.9 (which is less than France and surprisingly low)) and was very interesting. But I definitely agree that numbers from a more diverse country sample could be very interesting.

Germany has (or had) a system where you could work 3 days and get paid for 3.5 days. The government chipped in the extra, I believe.

I think the idea was to encourage more part-time workers so the unemployment rate would drop. And for a couple intending to have a single member working, it would encourage both to work part-time instead.

Re: How do people in different countries spend their time?

#23

Post by silentbicycle »

igrekel wrote: post #21
silentbicycle wrote: post #16

Among other complaints (pie charts?), it seems odd that "eating / sleeping" are combined. Seeing each individually would be far more useful. The actual report (not the Economist summary) has better graphs and more info, though - perhaps that should have been linked instead?

I can't support this enough. The economist's summary had me just saying "so what", but after reading this comment I started looking at the actual report and I must say it is much much more interesting. http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_34637_2671576...

Primary sources are usually worth seeking out, anyway.

Re: How do people in different countries spend their time?

#24

Post by [deleted] »

billybob wrote: post #18
pmjoyce wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A classic example of a poor choice of visualisation. Pie and donuts aren't always useless but they're very awkward to interpret here. I made a quick'n'dirty replacement using a stacked column chart if anyone is interested: https://demo.geckoboard.com/dashboard/CF6225A8BF97972D/

Better, but still hard to read, I think. If I want to compare the green bars for two countries, they don't sit side by side, because the sections under them are of varying heights. I think this would be more ideal: Country 1 Work :XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (X%) Country 2 Work :XXXXXXXXXXXXX (X%) Country 1 Sleep:XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (X%) Country 2 Sleep:XXXXXXXXXXXX (X%)

[deleted]

Re: How do people in different countries spend their time?

#25

Post by igrekel »

silentbicycle wrote: post #23
igrekel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't support this enough. The economist's summary had me just saying "so what", but after reading this comment I started looking at the actual report and I must say it is much much more interesting. http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_34637_2671576...

Primary sources are usually worth seeking out, anyway.

Yes definitely. But in this case just looking at the Economist's summary, I didn't even feel it was interesting or worthwhile to look at the primary source.
Post reply on HN