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Showing posts from February, 2018

Bad Data, and Good Data Turned Bad

Figure 1:  U.S. coal production (million short tons) and employment (thousand workers) Figure 2:   U.S. coal consumption 2002-2017 (million short tons).  These are two graphs about the use of coal in the United States.  In the Figure 2 it shows the consumption of coal in the United States over multiple years.  I would say that this is the good graph because it shows how the consumption is decreasing and the graph is easy to understand.  In Figure 1 it shows the production and employment from the coal industry.  This is the false or bad graph because it claims that the production and employment is going up.  This doesn't make sense because the consumption of coal has been continuously going down. Source:  MSHA Part 50, MSHA Open Government Data