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Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

andrewducker.livejournal.com

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Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#41

Post by damoncali »

mkaltenecker wrote: post #25

It’s quite astonishing that so many people here prefer readability over correctness. What is wrong with you? Readability is optional. Correctness is not. That’s obviously the wrong tradeoff. Never outright manipulate your data to make it more readable! If you can’t make your data readable enough without manipulating it you just can’t present your data that way. Period. Find a better way. (I do not think there is any…

Two reasons:

1. The numbers are right there for all to see.

2. Nielsen's business is not to make academic-grade charts. Their version is far, far better for their customers' needs.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#42

Post by SteveJS »

mkaltenecker wrote: post #25

It’s quite astonishing that so many people here prefer readability over correctness. What is wrong with you? Readability is optional. Correctness is not. That’s obviously the wrong tradeoff. Never outright manipulate your data to make it more readable! If you can’t make your data readable enough without manipulating it you just can’t present your data that way. Period. Find a better way. (I do not think there is any…

It's a log scale. The bottom axis should use tick marks to make it is obvious. A poorly marked log scale is certainly something to fix. It's not the same as fudging the data.

[edit: If you wish to say a log scale is inherently misleading in this context ... go for it. That's different then saying the data is manipulated.]

[Edit2: The area is not meaningful. The widths are meaningful if there is a total ordering and the scale is labeled. ... I do however agree I am probably way overestimating how obvious a [log(1+cumulative percentile),log(1)] mapped to the xaxis is. Also the chart does scream compare areas, and those are strictly meaningless unless comparing within the same OS.]

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#44

Post by ameasure »

Terretta wrote: post #39
aneth4 wrote: post #33

This is just generally a horrible way to make a chart that is intended to communicate relative size - it's worse than a pie chart because visually it's much harder to compare sizes of horizontal and vertical rectangles. To compound that by appearing to have proportional sizes, but being completely wrong, is humorously incompetent. Reminds me of those joke maps showing NYC as dominating the US.

> it's worse than a pie chart because visually it's much harder to compare sizes of horizontal and vertical rectangles Research I've seen suggests the exact opposite -- that people are great at estimating area of rectangles, and terrible at estimating area of circular or triangular shapes. They know which circle is bigger, but don't have any idea by how much bigger. That said, pie chart slices work for simple data no…

If you're interested in comparing the various market shares, a simple bar chart is much easier to understand, just look at which one is taller.

With these rectangle/tree map things, I never know what to think: well this one is wider, but this other one is taller; you have to do multiplication just to compare 2 market shares.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#45

Post by wpietri »

damoncali wrote: post #41
mkaltenecker wrote: post #25

It’s quite astonishing that so many people here prefer readability over correctness. What is wrong with you? Readability is optional. Correctness is not. That’s obviously the wrong tradeoff. Never outright manipulate your data to make it more readable! If you can’t make your data readable enough without manipulating it you just can’t present your data that way. Period. Find a better way. (I do not think there is any…

Two reasons: 1. The numbers are right there for all to see. 2. Nielsen's business is not to make academic-grade charts. Their version is far, far better for their customers' needs.

The first is a "it's not a lie because we explain it in the small print" argument. Technically true but practically false.

The latter is just a bare assertion. Got proof? I'd bet not. Which is why you had to say "far, far", hoping that people would just go along with you.

Personally, I'd think that Nielsen's business is to make sure their customers know what's going on. That's not an argument for running the second graph; it's an argument for making a third graph that conveys the correct intuition. Or just to publish a table of numbers.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#46

Post by Dylan16807 »

wisty wrote: post #28
qxcv wrote: post #16

This looks suspiciously like logarithmic scaling which, as XKCD readers will attest, is a pretty typical technique for representing statistics which have differences measured in orders-of-magnitude. I'm not sure what all the panic on here is for, it's not as if Nielson only bumped Nokia, RIM and Microsoft's column widths.

Why use a logarithmic scaling for an area chart? Given the data it's presenting, a logarithmic chart is completely inappropriate. If I take the rectangle of "HTC / Android" and add it to the rectangle of "HTC / Windows", what do I get?

If it was proportional you wouldn't be able to read the windows label in the first place. I like this setup. Works as well here as it does in disk manager, the first example I can think of commonly visiting with log scaled area.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#47

Post by AshleysBrain »

SteveJS wrote: post #42
mkaltenecker wrote: post #25

It’s quite astonishing that so many people here prefer readability over correctness. What is wrong with you? Readability is optional. Correctness is not. That’s obviously the wrong tradeoff. Never outright manipulate your data to make it more readable! If you can’t make your data readable enough without manipulating it you just can’t present your data that way. Period. Find a better way. (I do not think there is any…

It's a log scale. The bottom axis should use tick marks to make it is obvious. A poorly marked log scale is certainly something to fix. It's not the same as fudging the data. [edit: If you wish to say a log scale is inherently misleading in this context ... go for it. That's different then saying the data is manipulated.] [Edit2: The area is not meaningful. The widths are meaningful if there is a total ordering and t…

Since when is a log scale used for market share? Ever seen a log scale of browser usage?

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#49

Post by damoncali »

wpietri wrote: post #45
damoncali wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons: 1. The numbers are right there for all to see. 2. Nielsen's business is not to make academic-grade charts. Their version is far, far better for their customers' needs.

The first is a "it's not a lie because we explain it in the small print" argument. Technically true but practically false. The latter is just a bare assertion. Got proof? I'd bet not. Which is why you had to say "far, far", hoping that people would just go along with you. Personally, I'd think that Nielsen's business is to make sure their customers know what's going on. That's not an argument for running the second g…

Personally, I'd think that Nielsen's business is to make sure their customers know what's going on.

In my experience, that is not the case. The information they provide is generally used by middle managers in large companies in internal powerpoint decks with the intent of waging intra-company warfare. The use of the the info is highly political and opinionated, not rational and academic.

So, yeah, it would be preferrable to put out an immaculate chart with perfect proportions, good design, and clear text. But often it's just easier to cram the words in and make it fit. The bottom line is that the intended target of these charts just does not care about these details. They have an agenda of their own, and will use the Nielsen data to advance it. For Nielsen to spend time and money obsessing over these sort of things woud go largely unappreciated.

Is it great? no. Even good? no. Does it meet their customers' standards and needs? Yes.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#50

Post by Terretta »

ameasure wrote: post #44
Terretta wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's worse than a pie chart because visually it's much harder to compare sizes of horizontal and vertical rectangles Research I've seen suggests the exact opposite -- that people are great at estimating area of rectangles, and terrible at estimating area of circular or triangular shapes. They know which circle is bigger, but don't have any idea by how much bigger. That said, pie chart slices work for simple data no…

If you're interested in comparing the various market shares, a simple bar chart is much easier to understand, just look at which one is taller. With these rectangle/tree map things, I never know what to think: well this one is wider, but this other one is taller; you have to do multiplication just to compare 2 market shares.

This diagram is a collection of bar charts. One bar chart running horizontally, showing OS, the other bar chart(s) vertical, showing manufacturers within an OS. It could be disassembled, certainly, but then doesn't as readily show the sets and subsets of who has how much relative share of the whole.
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