[RD] Daily Graphs and Charts

[Monsterzuma]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/where-to-find-the-smartest-commenters-on-the-internet

 

[Lord Chambers]

Dammit, I made the mistake of looking at the sample sentences used to assess the reading levels. Now I can't as easily confirm my worldview.

http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-c...ded-view-of-the-human-brain_5180324975963.png
I once heard that the part of your brain responsible for feelings of pleasure was the same area responsible for sneezing. It seems that is not true. Oh well, it's definitely stimulated during a sneeze.

 

[Monsterzuma]

Intra-market breadth is deteriorating, suggesting fewer and fewer stocks are actually contributing to the current rally in global equities.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-09/fewer-and-fewer-stocks-are-driving-rally

 

[Monsterzuma]

Dammit, I made the mistake of looking at the sample sentences used to assess the reading levels. Now I can't as easily confirm my worldview.

did it confirm your worldview to see fox news listed as third most sophisticated on that list?

 

[Monsterzuma]

http://www.businessinsider.com/hatzius-college-educated-unemployment-2013-5

 

[Monsterzuma]

 

[Lord Chambers]

did it confirm your worldview to see fox news listed as third most sophisticated on that list?

I wouldn't have ranked it third, but I wouldn't have ranked it lower than sixth. You have to be pretty sharp to maintain a worldview where you disagree with 98% of climate scientists about climate change.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Interactive chart! Blah blah blah 400ppm CO2 concentration, but do you know why the Keeling Curve sawtooths back and forth through the seasons?

http://www.motherjones.com/environm...84718079571&action=collapse_widget&id=7812001

 

[Murky]

Interactive chart! Blah blah blah 400ppm CO2 concentration, but do you know why the Keeling Curve sawtooths back and forth through the seasons?

http://www.motherjones.com/environm...84718079571&action=collapse_widget&id=7812001

Spoiler :

The famous ‘saw-tooth’ line of the graph reflects the seasons: there are more trees and plants in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere, so globally the world’s land areas ‘breathe in’ during the northern spring/summer and out during the northern autumn/winter.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

Spoiler :

Awesomatico! Very pretty, really.

Spoiler :

But that is cool as well, nice contribution Though I need to add that I have the feeling that the poverty of Sub-Sahara-Africa is not so much a n reflection of wealth as such but of wealth not keeping up with their exceptional population growth.
- keeping in mind that non-"modern"-societies bear more children
In other words, poor regions which high birth rates may distort the picture.

 

[Eukaryote]

That's amazing!

 

[Lord Chambers]

Spoiler There are more people living inside this circle... :

I went on an internet mission to fact check this image. I discovered it comes from a reddit user, and that it's veracity has been confirmed in this discussion: http://gizmodo.com/the-most-crowded-part-of-the-whole-world-fits-in-this-o-493138360

I will now celebrate.

 

[Mise]

I'm actually disappointed that whoever made the map didn't use the usual Mercator projection, just to show it in even more stark terms. Afterall, that projection is the one we see the most, so seeing it like that would be a lot more salient anyway.

 

[Lord Chambers]

What I love about this model is how you could put the venn diagrams on a test and American voters would probably give an even distribution of answers about which one best represents the U.S. system. Of course, you'd need to include a fourth option for none-of-the-above/all-of-the-above/depends, which would be the correct answer, since authority between these three bodies varies throughout the country and depending on the issue.

 

[Murky]

The CO2 Hockey stick predictions and observations

Source
Figure 4 Green dots show the 30-year average (area-weighted mean over the continents) across the new 2k reconstruction, as shown in Figure 3b. The red curve shows the global mean temperature, according HadCRUT4 data from 1850 onwards (also in Figure 3b, smoothed with a 30-year window). This in blue the original hockey stick of man, Bradley and Hughes (1999) with its uncertainty range (light blue). Artist: Klaus Bitterman.

 

[metatron]

Afterall, that projection is the one we see the most,

Who is "we"?
I mostly see pseudocylindrical projections. In newspapers, textbooks, tv news etc.

 

[Mise]

Well the BBC uses the Gall projection, which to me looks like a slightly less outrageous Mercator. Google uses a projection which again looks basically like the Mercator. I didn't mean to be specific about the Mercator, but the projection the graphic used certainly doesn't look like one commonly used here.

 

[metatron]

I'm actually disappointed that whoever made the map didn't use the usual Mercator projection, just to show it in even more stark terms. Afterall, that projection is the one we see the most, so seeing it like that would be a lot more salient anyway.

Sorry to re-quote, but i forgot to state the obvious:

You already got your wish - well in part at least. Cause the map posted is not an equal area projection. As one in the reddit thread pointed out, this is probably Winkel III - a compromise projection.
Just look at Antartica...

And it's even worse, due to a circle being imposed unprojected.

As another one in the reddit thread pointed out, this is what an actual circle would look like.
That already looks bigger. And if we were to use an equal area projection it would be even bigger, comparatively.

It would still be impressive, just not as much.

Well the BBC uses the Gall projection, which to me looks like a slightly less outrageous Mercator. Google uses a projection which again looks basically like the Mercator. I didn't mean to be specific about the Mercator, but the projection the graphic used certainly doesn't look like one commonly used here.

1. The maps that most people in the western world encounter most frequently (continental maps in TV weather reports) are roughly never rectangular maps (like Mercator or Peters) but generally compromise projections with strong emphasis on area and equidistance.
Cause equidistance kind of matters - a lot - if you have weather systems moving accross a static map. And be it just for aestetics if for nothing else.

2. Google kind of has to use a (bad, bad, evil) rectangular projection, since the primary use of google maps is to zoom in and look at city plans or even individual neighborhoods. Anything but a rectangular map would produce very oddly shaped houses, structures, egg shaped roundabouts etc.
Of course you could switch the projection when zooming out but that comes with its own set of problems.

3. Virtually every textbook map i have encountered in 13 years of public school and horribly many years of university was either equal area or a compromise with strong emphasis on either equal area or equidistance or both. Kavrayskiy, Mollweide, Winkel mostly.
I personally still find that Mollweide is very sexy. In particular it looks significantly less bad compared to other maps if you move the center away from the equator for whatever purpose. Like this.

Oh, and this is not a new thing either. Look at this Nazi public school textbook map (Germany, 1937).
Apparently they didn't get the memo about Mercator reinforcing notions of European supremacy.

(And yes, that's Winkel III, too).

I'd like to summarize all this by calling you way too pessimistic and everything, if it weren't for the fact that it's pretty damn hard to find an equal area population density map on the internet...
This is the best i can come up with in a hurry. 2004. No funny circle that isn't a circle. No distortion that makes the contrast even more stark. And yet it's still impressive enough.

 

[Mise]

Yeah, I realise that the map isn't equal area either -- I really just wanted it to look like the kind of maps that most people see on a regular basis, for two reasons: 1) because the projections we normally see are even more distorting of area, and 2) because I think the shape of the map and the shapes of the countries look jarring and distracting enough that it would have been more salient on a different projection.

I can't remember the last time I saw a weather map of Europe - Brits don't care as much about the continent I guess. Maybe my experience isn't the experience of most other people; I don't care though - the map would still be more salient to me on a different projection

My favourite projection is the Tobler hyperelliptical.

 

[Lord Chambers]

My favourite projection is the Tobler hyperelliptical.