Police Killings per Capita v Homicide Rate per Capita for Select OECD Countries [OC]Submitted by dr5c t3_y350kf in dataisbeautiful
dr5c OP t1_is6mos5 wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in Police Killings per Capita v Homicide Rate per Capita for Select OECD Countries [OC] by dr5c
It literally does not change the shape of the graph, only the ticks of the axis. The information is still preserved since they are ratios.
CaptnGizmo t1_is6nrfq wrote
I'm not sure about that. I was initially confused why Canada's police killings were so high compared to homicide rates, because I was fooled.
Finn_3000 t1_is9ax0x wrote
If he made it with per 100k capita then it literally woulsnt look any different. It would just say 0.2 instead of 20 on the X axis.
bomphcheese t1_is6pi3z wrote
I also read it incorrectly. It absolutely affects how the data is read and information processed. Not cool.
[deleted] t1_is6nhwp wrote
I think you need to study how graphs commonly mislead people in order to avoid those techniques. Nobody should take a cheat seriously once they're exposed. There is responsible data science, and then there's that.
JPAnalyst t1_is6r99t wrote
The graph would look EXACTLY the same if they did that.
[deleted] t1_is6rqqr wrote
The shape of the data points doesn't change, but the axes do. That's what makes this misleading.
JPAnalyst t1_is6s2q8 wrote
It’s labeled, nothing is hidden. In graphs, it’s the visual that matters. That’s why we make graphs because the shape is what the takeaway is. This is not deceptive at all.
[deleted] t1_is6ylbj wrote
The takeaway is that police kill more people than homicides. This is the WRONG takeaway because it's factually incorrect. What that means is that one or more things you said about graphs is also WRONG.
TheMan5991 t1_is6uog4 wrote
It may not change the shape, but it is very misleading. You should use the same unit for both axes and just show the relative numbers. For example, rather than showing the US as 5/100k murders and 28/10M police killings, it would be more sincere to show 5/100k murders and 0.28/100k police killings. Or 500/10M and 28/10M. Because when people are reading the graph as you have it, they are going to see 5 and 28 and think that police kill almost 6 times as many people as other criminals. In reality, they kill a little over 5% as much.
Also, doesn’t make any sense to choose 10M since many of those countries on the left side don’t even have 10M people.
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