@LyricalFalls Sorry but this take is so tiresome.

In dataviz, painting as honest & clear a picture as possible is about showing as much context as poss, not a zero y-axis.

Here, 20 years of context are carefully built up to show typical range, then we see how 2020-21 has diverged from that.
@LyricalFalls Extending the y-axis to zero would make the picture less clear. That’s all it would do. No added clarity. No added information.
@LyricalFalls Every tiny design detail in this chart is about maximising information and minimising risk of misinterpretation.

Gradually showing the context, changing the lower extent of the chart to make clear it’s not a hard floor, using light gridlines instead of a dark baseline.
@LyricalFalls All "but y-axis" tells me is someone has learned the letter of the law, but never really thought about the spirit of the law (making informative charts that don’t mislead people).
@LyricalFalls What’s more likely: that I just missed that day of dataviz school, or that I’ve been making charts for mass audiences for 10 years and discussing issues like this throughout?
@LyricalFalls Charts like this always elicit a scattering of "but the y-axis" replies, but literally never result in anyone saying "wow {variable} fell to zero." It’s like a dataviz version of concern-trolling.
@LyricalFalls Sorry about the rant — it was prompted by the gradual straw-on-a-camel’s- back build-up of many many instances of this, not by yours alone! 😅

I just find it a really elitist take: "I a scholar of dataviz, think this could mislead someone", despite nobody being misled by it.

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More from @jburnmurdoch

9 Mar
Once again as I set out to collect Covid-related data for multiple countries (in this case vaccine coverage), I find myself marvelling at how much better the UK data is in terms of granularity, frequency & clarity. PHE & NHS really are world-leading in a lot of this stuff.
Plus a very big shout-out to the @opensafely team in this case, who are doing amazing work in this space that — from what I can see — is unrivalled elsewhere.
To be fair part of the issue here is many countries simply don’t collect data on race — in any context, not just Covid — which is ... quite something.

As someone once said, "what’s counted, counts". I guess if you don’t measure health inequalities, you won’t find any 🤷‍♂️
Read 4 tweets
3 Mar
NEW thread: Vaccines vs Variants

Vaccine effect is increasingly clear in France 🇫🇷🎉, with rates of cases, hospitalisations & deaths all falling among people aged 80+ while rising among younger groups

Could this change attitudes among Europe’s most vaccine-hesitant population?
As ever, we’ve run the same analysis for the previous rise and fall, to make sure rates don’t always decline fastest among elderly.

And as ever, they don’t: after France’s autumn peak, rates fall more slowly among 80+. More evidence that what we’re seeing now is due to vaccines
You’ll notice that although the French vaccine effect is clear on all metrics, this is in large part because rates are *rising* among younger groups.

The rate of decline among France’s elderly is much less steep than in the UK, but the contrast against younger groups is larger.
Read 13 tweets
25 Feb
NEW: it’s a while since I’ve done a big international Covid thread, but this one feels important.

The first six weeks of 2021 have gone rather well in terms of humanity’s fight against Covid.

As well as the rollout of vaccines, global cases halved(!) between Jan 11 and Feb 18
It’s worth looking beneath the surface at what has driven that steep decline, as it’s far from a one-size-fits all explanation.

In some countries — the UK being the most striking — restrictions have done a lot of the heavy lifting, and this is about adherence as much as policy.
But elsewhere — particularly India & South Africa — the scale of previous waves means levels of natural immunity are *much* higher than anything we’ve seen in UK or elsewhere in developed world.

In these areas, antibodies & T-cells will have done a lot more of the heavy lifting.
Read 17 tweets
22 Feb
Brief thread on vaccine passports and combatting hesitancy:

There’s been lots of chatter lately about vaccine passports. I get why lots of people think they’re a good idea, but one thing in particular strikes me as a big problem:

The stark racial divide in vaccine hesitancy.
Knowing what we do about rates of hesitancy (and measured vaccination rates 👇) among different ethnic groups, vaccine passports would amount to telling lots of non-white people "sorry you can’t come in here".

I don’t know about you, but that feels ... not good.
This is not to condone vaccine hesitancy, or to condescend and say "well it’s okay for them, considering everything".

Obviously we need to continue combatting vax hesitancy wherever we find it, *especially* among ethnic minorities among whom infection risk is also higher
Read 6 tweets
22 Feb
NEW: data from Scotland shows a single dose offers very strong protection from hospitalisation, including among people aged 80 and over.

Vaccinated elderly people 81% less likely to be admitted to hospital than their unvaccinated peers

This is very good news(!)
More good news: data from @PHE_uk on people in England aged 80+ shows solid and rising protection from a first dose of BioNTech/Pfizer, with second dose boosting efficacy to over 85%

These data are for protection against infection, not hospital. The latter will be even higher 😀
Finally, more PHE data, this time from healthcare workers (aged under 65) shows very strong and long-lasting protection from infection among this age group after a single dose.

As before, protection against hospitalisation will be even stronger.
Read 5 tweets
21 Feb
NEW with @ChrisGiles_:

UK vaccine effect is now clear in data on hospital admissions & deaths, but harder to see in cases

Some have seen this as a worrying sign, but I’m here to tell you it’s the opposite: a sign of how effective UK lockdown has been

ft.com/content/6d4ff1…
Israel’s vaccine effect is as clear as it is because cases and hospital admissions among younger, un-vaccinated groups kept rising there despite restrictions, or fell more stubbornly.

Low adherence to Israel’s current restrictions has been well-documented.
Overall, cases in the UK have actually fallen further and faster than in Israel despite that elusive vaccine effect being less clear over here.

So what’s going on?
Read 8 tweets

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