After writing my first blog and having discussions over Visualization for 4 weeks, I can certainly see a change of perception towards Data/Information. This deep thinking invoked me to search for many numbers of charts/reports/visualizations available all over the internet.What I exactly wanted to achieve is to find something with the help of which I can understand all the terminologies/principles/ properties and recommendations we learned from Professor Schermann. As I am always very much excited to know about new things or may be unexplored facts, this report became my end of the search and I am sure that many of you would be wondering that which country is at the top for what. So, here you go!!
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/because-every-country-is-the-best-at-something/
This chart is research of David McCandless along with Stephanie Smith and Esther Kersley. The original version of the research came out in 2009 which is also available on the link above. The data from which the research is derived is also attached and the spreadsheet shows all underlying information.
The author claims to represent all the countries and what they are best at. They all are divided into 9 categories altogether which includes commodity, psychology, ecology, gastronomy, economy, Nicety, humanity, technology, nasty. It makes this chart interesting enough to immediately connect with the audience. for example, I suddenly wanted to check out category humanity, especially for female entrepreneurs and Zambia won my heart. The backbone of the report is its documentation attached. We have discussed that validation is very important and documentation is something which gives us the base to rely on information. Below are some terms which we discussed in class and could be easily understood with this chart.
1. Claim: According to data, every country is the best at something. This claim is derived mostly from the data available for top ten countries in *.
2. Warrant: It is the relation you derive from data to explain your claim. Example- Australia is at the top in the world of cyber security incident and report comes from Pwc which compares the number of such incidents among countries and Australia has 9,434(highest) such incidents in comparison to other countries.
http://www.pwc.com.au/press-room/2015/cyber-security-risks-oct15.html
3. Backing: Backing supports your warrant and to validate this point I went on checking some news published on the report. An insight to all of us could be that Croatia is number one in kidney transplant the same was verified by NCBI. There is a sufficient growth in organ transplant that supports the argument.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3610255/
4. Rebuttal: It is that counter indication which makes the claim dubious. A rebuttal here can be seen from an example of Child Bride which is claimed to be the highest in Niger. There are six countries that do not specify a minimum age for marriage and it could possibly impact this claim. There might be no data available for these countries in this regard.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/09/these-are-the-countries-where-child-marriage-is-legal/
5.Where the claim qualifies: David reveals all of his data sources and accepted that for some countries there is no data available. Hence the claim qualifies only for participant countries and for all of these nine categories. Anything beyond which they cover could be another surprise.
Though the chart is not explaining the facts but it is very insightful. It might be very enlightening for commodity business because now they can know which country sells the cheapest Nike and Botswana is the best place to get Diamonds from. Otherwise, my wild guess would definitely be China for Diamonds. This chart is truthful as most of the facts include the information for those derivations. For example of validation, World Atlas also claims that worst country for child labor is Eritrea.
http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/worst-countries-for-child-labor.html
The last and the most crucial part is to understand the domain. Context is such powerful tool that it could turn things around. A good example is this chart showing Singapore at the top for having healthiest people. Data is driven from Bloomberg rankings and ranking is based on factors like birth, mortality rates and cause of deaths. Whereas USA today claims the same but differs in its listing putting Qatar at the top. The debate is not for who is right instead of context because 24/7 Wall St’s ranking is based on factors widely categorized as health indicators, access measures, or the economy. Here you see how the context can bring out a different picture, so be aware of your domain while claiming!
References:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/04/03/24-7-wall-st-healthiest-countries/70859728/
and all of the hyperlinks above.