:LIB: https://mobile.twitter.com/stlouisfed/status/1617266021810724866?cxt=HHwWhICzlZq41_EsAAAA
Whoever made this graph needs to be hit by a car. In fact, I'm taking this graph and will present it to my students as what not to do.
I did that today - I try to make sure they know that the art of statistics is to mislead using generally true data. It led to some good conversations.
One of my students pointed out that in addition to the general fuckiness there is also a difference in scale on the two axes lol. I hadn't noticed that.
Yeah the first correction post on Twitter forgot to fix the scale, and me and s few other people posted the full stretched out version lol
Well, it's the right thing to do when you want to engage in some pro-imperialism propaganda...
Edit: I've been cracking up for a solid minute at the person who just replied "oh no baby what is you doing"
Finding what is wrong with this graph is actually quite a good challenge for students. I might save it myself.
Everyone is using the left numbers, except :amerikkka: has its own ludicrous scale on the right. It took me a hot minute to figure out wtf was going on.
If the scales were consistent, it'd just show how imperialist the US is and that China is barely nipping at their heels. All the other countries would be barely visible as some squiggles at the bottom.
China's highest point is HALF the US lowest point!
:fedposting:
It's so useless as a graph, literally only the US uses the right axis. The only conceivable good faith reason I can think of for this is because the actual to scale graph would be unviewable, otherwise it's obviously to gin up support for more military spending.
The US numbers aren't even correct, they are just copy-pasting yearly DoD funding budget numbers. US military spending is at least $300B higher.
i remember the days when i thought certain axis truncations in popsci were intentionally misleading. this is criminal. theyre frothing for war
