Archive for November, 2016
Beware–eating like a king is not healthy
With T
hanksgiving coming up I am looking forward to a feast beyond all others throughout the year. Therefore, I did not want to know that eating like a king has been demonstrated to be unhealthy. I learned of this while reading The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom by Stephen M. Stigler, one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of statistics. In his chapter on the pillar of Design, he relates (p. 150) a story from the Old Testament of how Daniel eschewed a rich diet of meat and wine offered by King Nebuchadnezzar. Daniel proposed what may be the earliest clinical trial—he and his three companions eating only pulse* and water for 10 days. Meanwhile several followers of the King enjoyed his fare for the same period. In the end Daniel and his friends fared better, at least on the basis of health.
The lesson here is to polish off the bounty of Thanksgiving before 10 days are up, in other words, do not lay off those lovely leftovers! Then eat like Daniel for a few weeks in preparation for the year-end holiday feasts. That will keep you healthy by my interpretation of Daniel’s pioneering study on diet. ; )
*Dried beans and peas (yuk!) as seen here.
Jittery gauges making people crazy on election night
Posted by mark in Graphics, Uncategorized on November 15, 2016
Early last Tuesday evening I went to the New York Times elections website to check on the Presidential race. It had Clinton favored, but not by much—just a bit over 50% at the time, with the needle wavering alarmingly (by my reckoning) towards the side of Trump. A few hours later I was shocked to see it at a plus 70% for Trump. By the time I retired for the night the Times had him at near 100%, which, of course turned out to be the case, to my surprise and many others, even President Elect Trump himself, I suspect.
Being a chemical engineer, I like the jittery gauge display—it actually is less unsettling for me than a needle that is fixed (which usually happened only when a measuring instrument failed). Even more important, from my perspective as an aficionado of statistics, is the way this dynamic graphic expressed uncertainty—becoming less jittery as the night went on and returns came in. However, the fluctuating probabilities freaked out a lot of viewers, leading to this explanation by NYT as to Why we used jittery gauges.
For an unbiased, mainly positive, review of this controversial graphical approach by the Times to report election results see this Visualizing Data blog.
“Negativity expressed towards the jitter was a visceral reaction to the anguish caused by the increasing uncertainty of the outcome, heightened by the shocking twist in events during the night, [but] I found it an utterly compelling visual aid.”
— Andy Kirk, author of Visualizing Data
P.S. Here’s a new word that I picked up while researching this blog: “skeuomorphism”, meaning the designing of graphics to resemble real world counterparts, for example, Apple Watch’s clock-like interface. Evidently battles have been raging for years in the tech world over using this approach versus flat, minimalist, designs. I had no idea!