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Misleading Graph Generator

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Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#21

Post by zealon »

Maybe a bit off-topic here, but I think there is a cause-effect relationship between number of transistors and life expectancy. More transistors implies more computing power. More computing power leads to better/faster information processing, including medical information. This leads to faster patient diagnostics, better treatments (pharmaceutical innovations), earlier and more precise health warnings (lab tests an medical equipment), and so on.

Faster and better information processing leads also to higher food quality (food processing plants), higher life quality (environmental temperature and humidity control), etc.

Germany is a highly industrialized country, so information processing power causes a big social impact.

Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#22

Post by TeMPOraL »

mrtksn wrote: post #3

How is this graphs fault? The only fault the graph has is that it clearly displays the data, the problem is in the idea that is represented. It's formally called "Correlation does not imply causation" and it's fault of the person who is suggesting it. There is a famous satirical version of this too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PiratesVsTemp(en).svg It has nothing to do with graphs, graphs are are just visual to…

> How is this graphs fault?

It's not. I'd love if more people understood this clearly, it's not "statistics" that are "misleading" - it's their authors that are lying.

You can lie when speaking, you can lie in writing, and in the same way you can lie with data or with data presentation. There's no fundamental difference. Either you do your best to tell the truth, or you do your best to mislead people.

I wish people treated, on the emotional level, being presented with a misleading graph in the same way as being lied in the face in person. It should have the same social cost. If I told you a blatant lie, you would never want to have anything to do with me in your life anymore. So please, in the same way, don't trust those journalists, companies, salesmen and others, who mislead people by using statistical graphics.

Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#23

Post by mrtksn »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #17
mrtksn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Correlation means that there is some kind of relation between two variables(for example, how they change over time) but it says nothing about the mechanics of the relation, which is the causation. Let me investigate this example: the observation: Students who watch less TV have better grades. It's not like pirates v.s. global warming, it actually makes sense at first and if you are the minister of e…

It's not like that. Correlation does not imply causation only in the strict meaning of "imply", =>, in mathematical logic. But correlation is sure as hell evidence for casual relationships. Just yesterday I found a blog post by author of "Think Bayes" book explaining that nicely. http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/02/correlation-is-evide... Moreover, with good enough correlation data, you can even determine the dir…

I would not go into lengths to call correlation an evidence. It can be taken as a clue for further investigation because it also does not deny causation.

Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#24

Post by xtacy »

zealon wrote: post #21

Maybe a bit off-topic here, but I think there is a cause-effect relationship between number of transistors and life expectancy. More transistors implies more computing power. More computing power leads to better/faster information processing, including medical information. This leads to faster patient diagnostics, better treatments (pharmaceutical innovations), earlier and more precise health warnings (lab tests an m…

Maybe, but there is another, perhaps simpler hypothesis: Both the transistor count and life expectancy increase with time.

One way to verify one or the other is to look at a linear hypothesis:

    States: LifeExp, Transistors, Time
    Structural Equation Model [1]:
Model 1:

    LifeExp ~ Time + Transistors + noise_exp_1
    Transistors ~ Time + noise_trans_1
(The 2nd equation means that: Transistors(t) = a * t + noise, and you try to estimate "a" from the data.)

vs Model 2:

    LifeExp ~ Time + noise_exp_2
    Transistors ~ Time + noise_trans_2
If model 2 has more predictive power of LifeExp than model 2 (i.e., noise_exp_1 is lower than noise_exp_2), then according to _this_ model, Transistors causally affects LifeExp. However, this model is way too simplistic and doesn't incorporate other causal paths, such as the one you describe (Transistors -> Computing -> DiagnosticRate -> ...)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_equation_modeling

Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#25

Post by TeMPOraL »

mrtksn wrote: post #23
TeMPOraL wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like that. Correlation does not imply causation only in the strict meaning of "imply", =>, in mathematical logic. But correlation is sure as hell evidence for casual relationships. Just yesterday I found a blog post by author of "Think Bayes" book explaining that nicely. http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2014/02/correlation-is-evide... Moreover, with good enough correlation data, you can even determine the dir…

I would not go into lengths to call correlation an evidence. It can be taken as a clue for further investigation because it also does not deny causation.

It is evidence for causation, in the Bayesian statistics meaning of "evidence". The first article I linked explains the process in detail.

Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#27

Post by jkrems »

Everyone's talking about "correlation vs. causation" but I'm pretty sure the page explicitly states that that's not what this is about:

> if its axes are chosen unwisely

The graph is misleading because it makes it look like the transistor count and the life expectancy grow at the exact same rate. It pretends there's a linear correlation. And that's the misleading part.

Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#28

Post by gavinpc »

jere wrote: post #14

This isn't a graph generator. It's just a graph. You can plug data into it and get a graph, I guess, but the same goes for Excel. A misleading graph generator that automatically matched concurrent data sets based on correlation would be quite interesting, but this isn't it.

So are you saying that the term "graph generator" is misleading here?

Re: Misleading Graph Generator

#29

Post by zealon »

xtacy wrote: post #24
zealon wrote: post #21

Maybe a bit off-topic here, but I think there is a cause-effect relationship between number of transistors and life expectancy. More transistors implies more computing power. More computing power leads to better/faster information processing, including medical information. This leads to faster patient diagnostics, better treatments (pharmaceutical innovations), earlier and more precise health warnings (lab tests an m…

Maybe, but there is another, perhaps simpler hypothesis: Both the transistor count and life expectancy increase with time. One way to verify one or the other is to look at a linear hypothesis: States: LifeExp, Transistors, Time Structural Equation Model [1]: Model 1: LifeExp ~ Time + Transistors + noise_exp_1 Transistors ~ Time + noise_trans_1 (The 2nd equation means that: Transistors(t) = a * t + noise, and you try…

Math is not my field of expertise, but I think I get your point. My point was based on a social and economics perspective. I think these other causal paths are fundamental, because they are empirically verified (computing power vs health and life quality).
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