It's hard to imagine that a century ago 10 million elephants roamed Africa. Now, after decades of poaching, somewhere under 470,000 are left, and they face potential extinction if it can't be stopped. And that's not all—the $7-10 billion ivory industry helps fund terrorists from the Lord’s Resistance Army, Boko Haram, and Al Shabab.
The graph, as plotted, is misleading. It gives the impression (visually, and that's why we use graphs) that the distance between points in the X axis are accurately spaced. They're not. The Y axis is accurate, but the X axis has 79 years between points 1 & 2, but 10 years between points 2 & 3, and 8 years between points 3 & 4. The graph should be plotted as an X-Y scatter graph with lines connecting the points. The lines aren't accurate because there isn't any data between the points, but it's good enough for a first approximation. The message comes across with the accurate graph, so there's no reason to use the inaccurate one, especially because it leaves it open to criticism because it is inaccurate.
It's hard to imagine that a century ago 10 million elephants roamed Africa. Now, after decades of poaching, somewhere under 470,000 are left, and they face potential extinction if it can't be stopped. And that's not all—the $7-10 billion ivory industry helps fund terrorists from the Lord’s Resistance Army, Boko Haram, and Al Shabab.
The graph, as plotted, is misleading. It gives the impression (visually, and that's why we use graphs) that the distance between points in the X axis are accurately spaced. They're not. The Y axis is accurate, but the X axis has 79 years between points 1 & 2, but 10 years between points 2 & 3, and 8 years between points 3 & 4. The graph should be plotted as an X-Y scatter graph with lines connecting the points. The lines aren't accurate because there isn't any data between the points, but it's good enough for a first approximation. The message comes across with the accurate graph, so there's no reason to use the inaccurate one, especially because it leaves it open to criticism because it is inaccurate.
Sincerely,
Steve Kelem, Ph.D., Computer Science