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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

Comments

  1. Niklas LuloffFebruary 20, 2018 at 9:35 AM

    I love how you provided representation and details about your graphs! The information was direct and to the point! But a little bit more information would be good. Possible past experiences with wrong data? Or even good data gone bad?

    Good job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Madilyn TarrantFebruary 26, 2018 at 8:44 AM

    Good! You kept it short and sweet and provided details on why your chosen graphs were right or wrong. But maybe just provide why you know that the consumption of coal is going down.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SydneyMarch 25, 2018 at 6:07 PM

    I thought this was a good representation of different graphs, and I think more information would be beneficial. Good reasonings on what makes the bad graph bad though!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Marta ToranApril 29, 2018 at 3:15 PM

    Todd, the graphs are not showing up properly. This might be because you copied and pasted them instead of downloading them from the website, then uploading them into your blog post. Please fix them. You should also include the original source these graphs came from, not the tertiary source (which would be the AppVoices article). Each graph needs to have a caption (eg. Figure 1, Figure 2) and you need to refer to them in the body of the text. eg. "As seen in Fig 1, graphs often mislead the reader by omitting axes, or by distorting them..." etc.

    Please fix this so I can give you full points for this blog post. Let me know when you do so I can update your score.

    ReplyDelete

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