Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings • Hacker News Board

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#11

Post by mbreese » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 3:31 AM UTC

joejohnson wrote: post #10

projectileboy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approval + disapproval is almost always less than 100 in most polls.

Right, thus the dependence between the two quantities.

Yeah, but these are the values that are measured with the polls. What other metric would you want to use that has been measured using the same way for all these presidents?

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#12

Post by rorrr » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 3:37 AM UTC

projectileboy wrote: post #5

Depressing... Watching the consistent motions, I think this says more about the people than it says about their presidents.

Or maybe that certain presidents make certain promises and then consistently break them. Obama has been very disappointing, I had high hopes for him.

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#13

Post by JohnnyBrown » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 3:43 AM UTC

joejohnson wrote: post #4

The interface is pretty nice. Why are you plotting approval vs disapproval? These aren't independent quantities... I'm sure there is a better way to relate these two.

Perhaps this would work:

x-axis is time, y is approval/disapproval, width of line represents percent neutral. But then where's the excuse to play with the neat video library?

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#14

Post by rcthompson » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 4:10 AM UTC

I think there are one too many dimensions to this data. I know they collect statistics on both approval and disapproval, but for the most part approval + disapproval = constant, so I think it would be more informative to simply plot something like (approval - disapproval) on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Then you could see the trends and compare different presidents without having to watch the animation once for each president and then trying to remember where that president went while you're watching the next one so you can compare them.

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#15

Post by rcthompson » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 4:11 AM UTC

joshuahhh wrote: post #3

This appears to be totally broken in Firefox (9.0.1, on Linux)... don't know what's up with that.

Works prefectly fine for me on FF 9.0.1 on Ubuntu.

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#16

Post by timr » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 4:12 AM UTC

mbreese wrote: post #11

joejohnson wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, thus the dependence between the two quantities.

Yeah, but these are the values that are measured with the polls. What other metric would you want to use that has been measured using the same way for all these presidents?

To be fair, "approval" hasn't been measured the same way for all of these presidents.

But to answer your question, I'd imagine that a plot of unemployment rate vs. approval rating would be quite enlightening.

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#17

Post by xianshou » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 4:36 AM UTC

rcthompson wrote: post #14

I think there are one too many dimensions to this data. I know they collect statistics on both approval and disapproval, but for the most part approval + disapproval = constant, so I think it would be more informative to simply plot something like (approval - disapproval) on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Then you could see the trends and compare different presidents without having to watch the animation once for…

Actually, for several of the presidents, approval + disapproval != constant. For example, Obama moves straight right (up on disapproval) for his first 200 days before descending in approval. There seems to be a substantial difference between the effects of actions that anger some (presumably of the opposing party) and those that disappoint all.

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#18

Post by redthrowaway » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 4:39 AM UTC

rcthompson wrote: post #14

I think there are one too many dimensions to this data. I know they collect statistics on both approval and disapproval, but for the most part approval + disapproval = constant, so I think it would be more informative to simply plot something like (approval - disapproval) on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. Then you could see the trends and compare different presidents without having to watch the animation once for…

If you did that, though, you'd have to plot each president as a line. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's a different visualization entirely.

This reminds me in many ways of Hans Rosling's TED talk on visualizing global health outcomes and other data:

http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#19

Post by greyhill » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 4:51 AM UTC

joejohnson wrote: post #10

projectileboy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approval + disapproval is almost always less than 100 in most polls.

Right, thus the dependence between the two quantities.

I think it's interesting that at the beginning of the Obama time series, his approval rating remains constant while his disapproval rating steadily increases. Assuming that "Approval + Disapproval = 1%" would lose that information.

Maybe it would make more sense to show approval (or disapproval) and undecided?

Re: Visualization of U.S presidents' approval ratings

#20

Post by waterlesscloud » Thu, Jan 26, 2012, 5:05 AM UTC

Thanks for this. The animation is interesting. Ping pong Truman, for example. Learned some things too, like that LBJ finished up worse off the Nixon did.