Calling Out GE's Misleading Data Visualizations 123
theodp writes "Stephen Few never did suffer data visualization fools gladly. After seeing an oil exec (mis)use data viz to put a positive spin on Gulf Oil Spill cleanup efforts, Few felt compelled to call out BP. And now it's General Electric that's got Few's dander up: 'The series of interactive data visualizations that have appeared on GE's website over the last two years,' writes Few, 'has provided a growing pool of silly examples. They attempt to give the superficial impression that GE cares about data while in fact providing almost useless content. They look fun, but communicate little. As such, they suggest that GE does not in fact care about the information and has little respect for the intelligence and interests of its audience. This is a shame, because the stories contained in these data sets are important.' Concerned about his strong reactions to poorly designed data visualizations, Few asked his neuropsychologist wife whether he might be overreacting. She, too, agrees that GE's natural gas visualizations are maddening, which one might be tempted to dismiss as predictable, although Eyeo Festival presenter Michal Migurski also declares GE's effort 'one terrible, terrible bit of nonsense.'"
The most useful one (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Summary v2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe I'm too naive, but I suspect it's not even that malicious. I think it's merely that marketing folk got a hold of some numbers that the company wanted to put a positive spin on, and thought they (the marketing folk) were statisticians. About the only thing I learned from my Engineering Statistics course was that statistics looks obvious, but is far more complicated than it looks (at least, if you want to approach accuracy and such). I highly doubt that your average marketing drone has taken that much in post-secondary level statistics, and still think that a simple, but pretty, graph conveys the information they want it to.
I actually suspect that BP was about the same. A graph was made, the presenter had no fundamental understanding of it, and merely drew conclusions from the picture, the same as your average person might. And, since statistics is far harder than it appears (you know, actually paying attention to details), average people might accept the misconstruction as truth. I don't think it was deliberate on the part of the presenter, merely uneducated.
It'd be nice if presenters were actually knowledgeable in the subject they're presenting. However, for some reason, techies spurn the limelight more than average, while confidence men soak it up. I don't see a switch happening too often. (Gates, Jobs - these are exceptions, not the norm; most big-corp CEOs are former sales people, not former techies.)
Re:Can somebody translate the summary into English (Score:2, Interesting)