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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

#51

Post by pohl »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #47
SteveJS wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Since when is a log scale used for market share?

At least since the appearance of data sets that lent themselves towards such visualization. For example, how better to compare the growth of various platforms, from TRS-80 days to the iPad while the entire industry grows exponentially?

http://www.asymco.com/2012/01/17/the-rise-and-fall-of-person...

Edit: But I guess that's really market magnitude over time, not quite what you asked.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#52

Post by kens »

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…

Can someone explain how a log scale could work for this sort of stacked graph? (Serious question, not rhetorical question.)

If the X axis is a log scale of market share, what would happen if Apple and Android both had 40% market share? Both bars would overlap.

If X is cumulative market share, the bar width would depend on order and the two hypothetical 40% companies would have different widths.

If each bar has area proportional to the log, how would that work? The logs of market share are negative unless there is an arbitrary constant in there. Also the vertical breakdown doesn't make any sense in that case, because the areas of the vertical blocks don't add up to the OS total. Also small market shares would have negative width?

So can someone explain how log scale could even theoretically work here?

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#55

Post by DennisP »

jezclaremurugan wrote: post #8

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. - Hanlon's razor

Cipolla's Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

1) Everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

2) The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

3) A stupid person is a person who caused losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

4) Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals.

5) A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

Source: http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/stupidity/

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#57

Post by mattmalin »

I also found the inaccuracy of the chart awful and looked into producing a correctly scaled version:

http://i.imgur.com/8wgAk.png

The main problem was being able to still display readable text, which should lead to using another way of visualising the data instead of leading to using an incorrect graphic.

I also looked into using a stacked bar chart to display the information, more information (and code for generating plot, though I didn't put too much time into making it look pretty) here: http://www.actuarially.co.uk/post/27156208823/smartphone-ope...

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#58

Post by keithpeter »

Terretta wrote: post #40
keithpeter wrote: post #36

Can anyone explain the advantage of the original graphic over a nicely captioned table of data? Mind you, this is a good statistics lesson. My teenage students might get quite interested in a 'discussion' of the relative merits of various kinds of phone, before representing the data and then comparing it to UK. US Mobile phone market share by OS and maker Android 51% Samsung 17% HTC 14% Motorola 11% Other 9% iOS (App…

In Europe, set theory is taught early on. In the US where it is not, the average person seems challenged to quickly visualize the relative significance of sets and subsets of numbers from a table. In any case, I think the correctly drawn rectangular chart conveys the significance in a single holistic glance, while the table above requires quite a few "memory registers" for comparing the sets and their parts.

Alas, set theory and the Venn diagram approach has been off the UK syllabus for some time as well as in the US.

I take your point about the correctly drawn/direct proportion version of the graphic being more quickly assimilated. I just think that with such a 'dynamic range' of data (0.1% compared with 0.2% in one category compared with 17% vs 14% in another) any kind of graphic will require very high resolution to convey the overall picture. I suspect that may have been the reason for the non-proportionality in the original Nielsen graphic.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#59

Post by baconner »

damoncali wrote: post #49
wpietri wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 preferr…

"For Nielsen to spend time and money obsessing over these sort of things woud go largely unappreciated."

This would be extremely short sighted thinking.

I'm a big beleiver in the art of not doing work that's unnecessary, but the art is in knowing when it matters. When not doing the work directly contradicts your brand's supposed strengths publically that's a problem.

Nielsen's brand is built upon a reputation of high quality and detailed demographic data. This is the basis on which customers buy data from Nielsen and what gives that hypothetical middle manger's powerpoint slide some weight. "This is from Nielsen so we can trust that it's good data not some up-and-to-the-right chart I tortured out of our data."

Events like this damage that brand. The damage may not manifest itself directly in sales up front but long term if the weight of "this is from nielson.." is gone then even in the cynical case where all the customers are clueless Nielsen will lose out to another data provider that has the right reputation.

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