What should have israel done instead?

[Tim_Partlett]

That’s fine, because a $.80 baseline is just that, an arbitrary recent minimum. By contrast, a 60% Jewish population baseline makes no sense unless there’s some reason 60% is expected or important.

The baseline is because there’s no data below that level. For both graphs.

[Kebooo]

lol at that huge, obnoxious graph. I agree graphs should show data first and foremost, but not at the expense of the eyes or the purpose of the graph. Having to scroll down a graph is ridiculous. You may as well just look at the actual data numbers and not a graph if you’re going to make them look like that one. That said, the graph that includes the 60% of the Jews serves the point better, since it gets across the same point (increase in Arab population growth), but doesn’t exaggerate the change, nor is it obnoxiously large.

[Flowers]

http://www.examiner.com/x-4668-Denver-Writing-Community-Examiner~y2010m1d29-Writers-Tip-Conquering-the-Noble-Troll
The Trolling Litmus Test: Here are a few red flags you can look for to determine if someone is trolling. While there will always be exceptions (for example, I’ve known a number of autistic gamers and others on psychiatric medication who often came across like trolls even though they did not intend to), this should give you a general idea of what you’re dealing with. As with all things, keep context in mind…
They are blatantly degrading and rude
They treat you and other commentators inferior
Their comment is off-topic
They take bits of what you write out of context to start a fight (make sure they didn’t just genuinely misunderstand what you wrote)
They post very frequently, responding negatively at every opportunity
They lack common courtesy
They use profanity on a site where it is prohibited
They’re vulgar
They use obvious tactics to prod people into fights
Their comments are not simply base critical thinking but are intended to belittle others
They don’t actually state a point, they just disagree for the sake of disagreeing
They don’t seem passionate about the subject, yet are determined to contradict
They try to encourage fights between other commentators
They use racial slurs, stereotypes, and other generalizations
They are unwilling to offer counterpoints if their views are challenged

It’s a fair cop but society’s to blame.

[Og_Dai]

Why is there only 8 data points? Why are they drawn as a bar graph, rather than a connected line? Why am I supposed to eyeball the length difference across a 4x length gap and discern a trend? Why in a graph supposedly about Jews and Arab relative populations is there a % number on top which is the total Jewish population, which includes another off-camera number of Druze?

If people would use sources correctly, provide links and essential data, 99% of dumb internet talk could be circumvented.

Edit: Sorry BBQ interupted and that fucking table (http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000636) refused to show proberly. Also imageshack is no longer my friend.

The important input is found in the Notes at the end anyways.

Editt: imageshack loves me again.

Enjojj.

V. Israel: Arab / Jewish Population (1949 - 2006)
A. Graph
[CENTER]

[/CENTER]

[Tracy_Baker]

The first graphic is bullshitishly deceptive, because it makes the rate of change look far bigger than it is - when one is trying to demonstrate a point, you don’t obscure the axis by ‘zooming in’ the way you did. The second graph is just fine, and demonstrates your point in a more sane way.

Fuck if I’m going to jump in on the rest of this loaded topic, but at least present your data reasonably.

The right graph to use depends on the point one is trying to demonstrate. If someone’s claiming that the percentage of Jews in Israel is declining relative to non-Jews, then the first graph illustrates that point perfectly.

The second graph does a crappy job of illustrating that point, however, because what it mainly shows is the the overall growth of Israel’s Jewish and non-Jewish population over time. That growth does nothing to help people visualize the relative change between those two populations, and in fact is confusing because the blue Jewish bar keeps getting taller even though their numbers relative to the non-Jews (which is supposed to be the point) decreases.

I do agree with lesslucid about the little squiggle thing. The first graph could certainly benefit from that, just to immediately alert you that the Y-axis doesn’t begin at 0.

[Og_Dai]

The right graph to use depends on the point one is trying to demonstrate. If someone’s claiming that the percentage of Jews in Israel is declining relative to non-Jews, then the first graph illustrates that point perfectly.

The second graph does a crappy job of illustrating that point, however, because what it mainly shows is the the overall growth of Israel’s Jewish and non-Jewish population over time. That growth does nothing to help people visualize the relative change between those two populations, and in fact is confusing because the blue Jewish bar keeps getting taller even though their numbers relative to the non-Jews (which is supposed to be the point) decreases…

Did you notice the xx% on top of the Jewish bars?

How’s that not relative?

[Flowers]

What does everyone think of this?

Is this an honest move towards civility and human rights, or is it something else? What do you make of their attempt to make other nations involve themselves in enforcing the blockade?

[Kalle]

It’s complete bullshit. Now, don’t get me wrong, anything that eases up the blockade would be an improvement. That said, Israel is more than capable of policing their border crossings for weapon smuggling. Weapon smuggling is once again used as an Israeli smoke screen to justify their attempt to keep the people of Gaza miserable.

The people of Gaza don’t need more international aid, they need to be able to import and export goods so they can get their economy going again. The Israelis are not going to let them do that.

[Tracy_Baker]

Did you notice the xx% on top of the Jewish bars?

How’s that not relative?

It is relative. Helpful, even. What I’m saying is that because the visual portion of the chart shows population growth over time, it’s incorporating something that has nothing at all to do with “% of Jews to Total.” If you’re going to use a bar chart, it’s better to depict that particular trend by making the Y-axis go from 0 to 100 percent and leaving the X-axis alone, like this:

[Tracy_Baker]

What does everyone think of this?

Is this an honest move towards civility and human rights, or is it something else? What do you make of their attempt to make other nations involve themselves in enforcing the blockade?

I see it as an attempt to legitimize an illegal blockade.

[Kebooo]

Weapon smuggling is once again used as an Israeli smoke screen to justify their attempt to keep the people of Gaza miserable.

I don’t quite get this - do you believe Israel just really, really hates Palestinians and their main goal is to make them miserable?

[frank_austin]

I don’t quite get this - do you believe Israel just really, really hates Palestinians and their main goal is to make them miserable?

Israel really, really hates Hamas, and their main goal is to make Palestinians miserable so that they will hate Hamas, too. Of course, this is too obvious for you to grasp.

[Kebooo]

Israel really, really hates Hamas, and their main goal is to make Palestinians miserable so that they will hate Hamas, too. Of course, this is too obvious for you to grasp.

They really, really hate Hamas because why? Because Hamas uses weapons and explosives against them. Now how ever could they do that? Well, by obtaining said weapons and explosives, of course. No weapons and explosives, no attacks against Israel, less burning hatred for Hamas.

I’d argue the blockade is serving two separate functions - making Palestinians miserable and reducing the amount of weapons Hamas can obtain. Both seem to be working. However, making Palestinians miserable isn’t helping anything and has become counterproductive. I imagine Israel’s leadership has figured this out and are slowly reversing course (to try to pretend they haven’t done anything wrong). Yet the blockade probably won’t be lifted anytime soon when it comes to checking for weapons. I don’t agree with Israel’s decision to prevent anything other than weapons from entering, but let’s not pretend weapons smuggling has nothing to do with it.

[Shiroko]

The blockade seems to be on the way out, in some sort at least. A lot of suggestions for stopping the blockade and making ships stop in Cyprus before arriving to Gaza so they can be checked for smuggling weapons by a neutral side are being heard.
There’s also a lot of pressure on Israel from both Europe and US.
And finally, the harsh blockade seems not to work. Preventing basic goods from Palestinians did not weaken Hamas in Gaza, and might only caused the opposite. It seems people that are in good relations with the Hamas are closer to the cake, and since Hamas controls the small cake left (By controlling all the smuggling into Gaza and the money).
Lieberman tried a few days ago to throw simple bone, removing the blockade in exchange for allowing the Red Cross to meet with Gilad Shalit. I doubt Israel is going to get even this small achievement.

[frank_austin]

They really, really hate Hamas because why? Because Hamas uses weapons and explosives against them. Now how ever could they do that? Well, by obtaining said weapons and explosives, of course. No weapons and explosives, no attacks against Israel, less burning hatred for Hamas.

I’d argue the blockade is serving two separate functions - making Palestinians miserable and reducing the amount of weapons Hamas can obtain. Both seem to be working. However, making Palestinians miserable isn’t helping anything and has become counterproductive. I imagine Israel’s leadership has figured this out and are slowly reversing course (to try to pretend they haven’t done anything wrong). Yet the blockade probably won’t be lifted anytime soon when it comes to checking for weapons. I don’t agree with Israel’s decision to prevent anything other than weapons from entering, but let’s not pretend weapons smuggling has nothing to do with it.

Sure, totally. That’s why they prevent children’s toys and chocolate from coming through. To prevent them from being weaponized. Tea? Cinnamon? Tools of terror!

Only a moron would look at the list of prevented items and not see the real reason behind the blockade. Stopping weapons is the face, but attempting to build resentment for Hamas is the reason.

(What I’m getting at is that the blockade doesn’t have anything to do with weapons because that’s not what they’re preventing from entering Gaza, and they know it.)

[espressojim]

I think it’s a little different with percentages, because that first graph makes it appear, on first glance, that Muslims have gone from being about 1/5th to about 1/3rd of the population in the space of 60 years. Of course, on a second glance you notice that they’ve started the graph at 60% and you’re not seeing the whole picture. I’ve always felt that leaving off part of an axis should be accompanied by that little squiggle thing, but I know it’s common just to start at the point where the scale makes observing the trendline easiest. So long as you accurately label your axes, I don’t think it’s a big deal. Speaking of deceptive graphs, take a look at this one:

That’s a graph that deserves a squiggle (2 actually) that shows a clear break on the X axis. What paper is that from? I know a bunch of people who work on that (Sekar Kathiresan’s group at MGH), and I’d be happy to give him a semi-playful punch if that’s his group’s work.

The only reason someone might use that graph is if they are doing a phenotype test of the extremes of the distribution, where extreme events on the right form all the signal.

I much prefer to talk about data and graphs to talking about clusterfucks.

[espressojim]

Anyone glancing that casually at a graph isn’t planning to use data responsibly, so it really doesn’t matter. Some idiot could claim the populations are equal and put that graph there to support their argument, hoping nobody noticed the 60% cutoff, but they’d be exposed as frauds pretty handily. The larger point is that nobody in this thread has used that graph to support anything other than the discussion of the trend that very graph depicts, so I don’t see what’s so awful about it.

Why do you make reading visualizations (that are supposed to HELP us understand things) harder?

The idea of visualizing data is to make things bloody obvious. If it isn’t, or it’s easy to misinterpret, you’ve failed. If you were up on your Tufte, you’d notice that many people try to remove tick marks entirely from their graphs. That doesn’t work when you zoom in.

[espressojim]

The thing is, the revised graph allows you to actually get a sense of not only the trend but the relative sizes of the different populations at a glance in a way that the first graph did not. And actually, that trend line has a different meaning if you’re thinking of it heading toward a point that is much further away. Maybe for people who are more mathematically inclined, the two graphs look basically the same, but for “visual thinkers”, the second graph conveys a different - and more accurate - idea.

I completely agree. Thanks for stating it better than I have.

[Tim_Partlett]

You mean this Edward Tufte?

Baselines

In general, in a time-series, use a baseline that shows the data not the zero point. If the zero point reasonably occurs in plotting the data, fine. But don’t spend a lot of empty vertical space trying to reach down to the zero point at the cost of hiding what is going on in the data line itself. (The book, How to Lie With Statistics, is wrong on this point.)

For examples, all over the place, of absent zero points in time-series, take a look at any major scientific research publication. The scientists want to show their data, not zero.

The urge to contextualize the data is a good one, but context does not come from empty vertical space reaching down to zero, a number which does not even occur in a good many data sets. Instead, for context, show more data horizontally! .

– Edward Tufte, October 18, 2001

[Tracy_Baker]

Why do you make reading visualizations (that are supposed to HELP us understand things) harder?

The idea of visualizing data is to make things bloody obvious. If it isn’t, or it’s easy to misinterpret, you’ve failed. If you were up on your Tufte, you’d notice that many people try to remove tick marks entirely from their graphs. That doesn’t work when you zoom in.

We obviously aren’t going to agree about that first graph, but with logic like this I honestly can’t believe you’re defending the second one (the bar chart) considering it introduces an extra variable (population growth over time) that is superfluous when comparing relative percentages. Wonder what Tufte would say about that?

Check these bar charts out side-by-side. Which one does a better job of demonstrating the trend “Jewish population in Israel is declining over time relative to the non-Jewish population” at a glance?:

Chart A

Chart B