Proportion matters – the diagram that shows the election result is balls


(Hat-tip http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/).

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4 Comments

  • Posted 7th May 2010 at 8:52 pm | Permalink

    Less open to a witty title but just as telling are the graphs on the following page:
    http://michaelandlaura.org.uk/~michael/blog/index.php?id=577
    (short url for twitter: http://bit.ly/a1xqQN )

  • VFRMark
    Posted 7th May 2010 at 10:30 pm | Permalink

    When is the mass demonstration?
    The above illustration is the best example I have seen so far of the injustice to the voters in our present system of electoral voting, so glaring in fact, it hurts to look at…
    An inquiry falls far short of justice for the people who were turned away from the polling stations, and the cost of £5000 per person to challenge this in the courts is an insulting slap in the face to the electorate, where is our collective outrage?
    If any person can afford the cost to challenge in the courts and they lose, they also lose the £5000 and the system gains that money, if they win they get the money back with no gain except the judgment in their favor, it’s just not right, they should stand to gain if they win the same as the court would stand to gain if they lost…

  • Paul Griffiths
    Posted 8th May 2010 at 2:12 pm | Permalink

    I think this graphic is actually rather poor at showing the problem. The blue and red circles look about the same size. Only the figures reveal that there is about a 10% difference in each case.

  • Duncan
    Posted 8th May 2010 at 6:26 pm | Permalink

    @Paul – Circles are bad at clearly illustrating and difference in simple values, which is one of the reasons they’re used time and time again in the Tory manifesto.

    New Rule – if you wish to illustrate proportion use pie charts, if you wish to illustrate change over time use bar charts or line graphs. Only use ‘circle graphs’ if you’re in the business of trying to mislead or confuse people.

    Nuts to the circles. Pie chart or it didn’t happen.

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