please empty your brain below
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I've no doubt that those who wish to depict whatever they wish will manipulate the scales of graphs such as these to their own ends. Reminds me of a book from 1954 (still in print, free pdf available) by Darrell Huff, "How to Lie with Statistics".
Tim W | 16.08.20 - 11:09 a.m. | #
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A feature of this recent collapse in GDP is that it was brought about intentionally by government action to protect the population, and not by inherent financial or economic failure, as on previous occasions. The hope is that, as virus conditions improve, there will be an equally rapid 'recovery', unless the government has c*cked things up again.
As for the graph, at least it's not one of those exponential things.
ActonMan | 16.08.20 - 11:42 a.m. | #
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I expect 2020's bar will literally be off the charts for a while -- except if they sneakily use log scales!
anonymous | 16.08.20 - 2:26 p.m. | #
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I've never been a fan of those % change on previous period charts as there is the potential to be seriously misled. It would be more useful to present these figures as actual amount of GDP (in £) versus time.
Peter | 16.08.20 - 4:22 p.m. | #
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Apart from "lies, damned lies and statistics" and the general antipathy towards them, visualisation in graphic form is still the most effective way to get important statistical numbers through to people.
I just hanker for a bit more pie chartage. Timelines notwithstanding and 3-D versions a bit obscure, you can't beat a good pie. Chart.
JP | 16.08.20 - 5:25 p.m. | #
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The effect will be even greater when the economy has some significant quarter on quarter growth. This will probably happen in the 3rd and 4th quarters of 2020, when there will growth even though the GDP will still be well below where it was at the end of 2019.
James | 16.08.20 - 9:55 p.m. | #
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Luckily people have had to deal with this sort of problem before. There's no really good solution, but some options are a broken y axis or a two-panel approach - see peltiertech.com/broken-y-axis-in-excel-chart
Maynard | 17.08.20 - 11:34 a.m. | #
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I'm always wary of a quoted percentage change or a percentage of the population statistic. Percentages are not 'real' numbers - for example, just 3% of the UK population doesn't have a mobile phone but in real terms, the insignificant don't let's bother about that three percent is 1.95 million real people.
Real numbers tell a plausible tale, not manipulation of data to promote or hide a desired aspect. Then there's cherry-picking of data - still telling the truth about those aspects but carefully omitting others.
I'm not denying the massive fall in GDP but percentages don't tell a fair story, just good for sound-bites and tv / newspaper headlines. We swallow too quickly, before we've chewed it over and had one of those "hang on a minute..." moments.
Joel | 17.08.20 - 10:16 p.m. | #
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