The task: critique/explain/criticise these diagrams.
This was shared on Twitter:
These come from the Daily Telegraph:
Comments/possible answers:
1) (Image from Twitter - can't recall exactly where.)
There appear to be 180 days in a school year. The times all work: eg 180 days x 20 mins per day = 3600 mins per year ( = 60 hours).
The number of words read is rather strange though. The obvious thing would be to assume a constant reading speed and therefore to divide the number of words per year by the number of minutes. This gives 500 wpm for the first group, 313 wpm for the second group and 44 wpm for the third group. Maybe you get quicker at reading the more you do, but even so there is a massive disparity here.
The number of books shown is not reasonable either. The shortest Harry Potter novel (the first one) has about 77,000 words. The first group would read 23 of these per year, the middle group about 3 and a half and the final group about a tenth of the book.
2) It seems very strange to have a graph with two lines on it where one is essentially the inverse of the other! The only people who aren't included on the graph are those who refused to state whether they were for or against Trump. Other than that, if the number of people who approve goes down then you might be unsurprised if the number who disapprove goes up!
Here I have reflected the red line and placed it on top of the blue line. A pretty good match!
3) Here people were asked to recall the food they had eaten that day and the calories were calculated. Then the actual food they had eaten was used and it was found that many people underestimated massively (forgetting about snacks etc)).
On average, men thought they had eaten 2065 calories (less than the 2500 recommended amount) but had actually eaten 3119 calories. For women the figures were 1570 and 2393.
The percentage increase is 51% for me (so they ate just over 50% more than they thought) and 52% for women. It is perhaps surprising that this is essentially the same for both genders.
4) BMI (Body Mass Index) is calculated by dividing your weight in kg by the square of your height in metres.
There are certain parts of the country that have more overweight people. What constitutes a 'region'?
It appears, for example, that Cambridge is a yellow section surrounded by a sea of orange. If Cambridge were considered part of the rest of Cambridgeshire then presumably it would all be orange there. The way different streets/villages/towns, etc are aggregated makes a big difference!
Sources:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXXcqHkX0AA3M98.jpg
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/03/02/world-reacts-horror-trump-delights-hobbesian-trade-wars/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/03/06/britains-new-diet-400-600-600-plan-counter-obesity/
