[HN Gopher] Mapping Coronavirus, Responsibly
___________________________________________________________________
Mapping Coronavirus, Responsibly
Author : three14
Score : 259 points
Date : 2020-02-26 21:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esri.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esri.com)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| I am using
| https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
| as an 'at a glance' overview
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| I'm trying to figure out which projection they're using for
| this, any idea?
| nwallin wrote:
| It's definitely some variety of Mercator. It's probably Web
| Mercator Auxiliary Sphere, which is the default for most Esri
| projects.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The difficulty I always thrash around with is: proportional by
| area or proportional by population? I used to do some crime maps
| and some areas would look quite crime-ridden ... because they
| were areas with very little population, as the census counts it,
| like parks and such, so the crime would look rather high. So
| dividing by population isn't the cure-all, but it beats nothing.
| For giggles, I would do crimes in a given region, crimes in a
| region divided by that area, and crimes in a region divided by
| the population in that region. Very different-looking results.
|
| I have often considered dividing by some kind of combination of
| area _and_ population, but even that seems not quite right.
| Disregarding "victimless crimes," much crime is interactive: two
| or more parties must be involved, therefore the population ought
| to have some kind of exponent attached to it, like particles
| bouncing against one another in a container.
|
| I never did puzzle this out, I am sure brighter minds than I
| would have come to some conclusions.
| heartbeats wrote:
| >therefore the population ought to have some kind of exponent
| attached to it, like particles bouncing against one another in
| a container.
|
| Population squared? That gives you the number of potential
| connections.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| That was my first thought, yes, but then I think area ought
| to be involved somewhere; if the area is large enough, even a
| medium population will not have people ("particles")
| interacting ("colliding") as often.
|
| In the rather clumsy taxonomy of crime I created from the
| UCR, most violent crime -- excepting suicide -- would be
| collision-based. Some drug crimes like possession would not
| be collision-based (although it could be argued that
| possession involves buying which involves another person)
| while drug sales would be. Crimes against property are
| interesting -- is that another person by proxy, or should
| that merely be collision-less?
| panic wrote:
| I actually love the 3D map despite how cheesy it is. It shows how
| much of an outlier Hubei is better than any of the 2D maps do.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I'm unclear as to whether we should be seriously concerned about
| Coronavirus in the US at this point. Are there preparations I
| should be making or precautions I should be taking? People have
| been WhatsApping me articles about face mask shortages, but I
| don't know if this is just scaremongering.
| pwg wrote:
| HN thread from yesterday on this very topic:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425593
| aaomidi wrote:
| Be as prepared as if you were living in the bay area and were
| preparing for an earthquake.
|
| There's nothing to really say the same situation happening in
| China, Iran, SK, Italy won't happen here.
|
| Have a supply of food ready, minimize being in crowds, don't
| touch your face when you're not inside the house.
|
| Other stuff I've been doing that aren't necessarily the right
| thing:
|
| - Eating meat well done for a while
|
| - Not eating raw veggies
|
| - Working from home more often
|
| - Telling sick co-workers to stay home (I'm in a tech company,
| theres really no excuse of sick days)
| xwowsersx wrote:
| These are good ideas. Thanks for your reply.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| US CDC:
|
| - Wash your hands.
|
| - Cover your cough.
|
| - Stay home.
|
| (Last: if you're sick, if the outbreak is local, if you don't
| absolutely need to be somewhere.)
|
| Ready: Pandemic preparations: Community mitigation guidelines
| to prevent pandemic influenza https://www.ready.gov/pandemic
|
| _Before a Pandemic_
|
| - Store a two week supply of water and food.
|
| - Periodically check your _regular prescription drugs_ to
| ensure a continuous supply in your home.
|
| - Have any nonprescription drugs and other health supplies on
| hand, including pain relievers, stomach remedies, cough and
| cold medicines, anti-diarrhoeal medication, fluids with
| electrolytes, and vitamins.
|
| - Get copies and maintain electronic versions of health records
| from doctors, hospitals, pharmacies and other sources and store
| them, for personal reference.
|
| - Talk with family members, loved ones, neighbours, co-workers,
| and other frequent contacts, about how they would be cared for
| if they got sick, or what will be needed to care for them in
| your home.
|
| _During a Pandemic_
|
| Limit the Spread of Germs and Prevent Infection:
|
| - _Avoid close contact_ with people who are sick.
|
| - When you are sick, _keep your distance from others_ to
| protect them from getting sick too.
|
| - _Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing or
| sneezing._ It may prevent those around you from getting sick.
|
| - _Wash your hands frequently_ to help protect you from germs.
|
| - _Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth._
|
| - _Practice other good health habits._ Get plenty of sleep, be
| physically active, manage your stress, drink plenty of fluids,
| and eat nutritious food.
|
| Adapted from: <https://www.ready.gov/pandemic>
|
| (Most of the prepatory advice will be familiar to Bay Area
| residents as typical earthquake preparedness. Elsewhere it's
| standard preparation for major winter storms or hurricanes. Be
| prepared to sit tight for a few weeks.)
|
| US CDC medical travel advisories:
| https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/notices
|
| United States, 2017, Draws on ~200 journal articles written
| 1990 - 2016. Provides a framework on response strategy to
| COVID-19. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm)
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| As someone living here in the Bay Area, I have little to no
| interaction with the current ongoing Coronavirus outbreak. Why
| are Asian countries taking such dramatic measures right now?
|
| To be willing to take on such an economic drain in order to do so
| makes it seem like they're treating the virus like a potential
| pandemic. Are the death rates for the current coronavirus
| outbreak substantially higher than the regular flu? What else am
| I missing here?
| moultano wrote:
| Yes, the death rates are somewhere around 20x higher, and it is
| much more transmissable. The nytimes has a great graph showing
| the range of possible values for death rate and
| transmissability of the virus as compared to other historical
| viruses. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/learning/whats-
| going-on-i...
|
| My only quibble is that the shape of the uncertainty shouldn't
| be a box, it should be oriented around a downward sloping line.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Then why is the article author downplaying it so
| substantially?
| moultano wrote:
| This isn't the best article, it appears to be a student
| activity guide. I was just intending to link to the graphic
| that has appeared throughout the nytimes' coverage.
| ohmanjjj wrote:
| Oh man, have you been living in a bubble?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Hospitalization rates and mortality rates are up to 20x those
| of the flu. This upper bound will probably decrease because the
| denominator is undercounted.
| [deleted]
| claudeganon wrote:
| Yes, the death rates are substantially higher than the flu. Flu
| is about .1% while coronavirus is 2% and remember that we have
| flu vaccines and somewhat effective drugs to combat influenza
| and nothing (yet proven) comparable for this new disease. High
| rates of hospitalization and injury.
|
| In the case of China, chaos resulting from the panedemic has
| the potential to undue Xi Jinping's reign, so his cadre has
| decided to take the hit on the economy and go full war mode to
| combat it.
|
| That being said, it does pose a critical danger and greater
| mortality rate if healthcare infrastructure is overwhelmed. The
| drastic lockdowns do help control the spread to a degree that
| mitigates this possibility and allows for the ramping up of
| response capacity. The US should be responding with comparable
| force (and probably will be forced to in the coming weeks), but
| there's a lot going against taking action at the moment, from
| poor national coordination, Trump administration cuts and
| malfeasance, bureaucratic impediments around mass testing, and
| outsourced supply chains.
| evanlivingston wrote:
| There are at least 7 cases in the bay area.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Wuhan-coronaviru...
| macintux wrote:
| No vaccine. No way to know that someone is infected and
| spreading the disease. More deadly than the flu. More
| devastating even to people who survive, something like 10% of
| those infected require weeks of intensive hospitalization.
|
| Because it's spreading silently and is so impactful to its
| victims it's a really big deal.
| ska wrote:
| Good data visualization is hard, and most mapped data that isn't
| geographical in nature is poorly done (cue xkcd cartoon).
|
| Some of the point in this discussion are pretty good, but the
| thing I missed is a good commentary on the temporal nature of
| anything like virus spread.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Thanks for posting this, and not just because it's immediately
| relevant. ESRI goes over some really good guidelines for
| visualizations as well as interpreting them that can be applied
| to anything you see in e.g. the New York Times.
| alanh wrote:
| I wish people would stop treating "coronavirus" and COVID-19 (or
| SARS-CoV-19) as synonyms. They are not. There are many more
| coronaviruses.
| [deleted]
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| We should have just called it SARS 2
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It seems that the medical community is converging on SARS-
| CoV-2, which is pretty close to your suggestion.
| smacktoward wrote:
| I can't count the number of times I've looked at a data
| visualization and wished I could sit down with the person who
| made it and read an Edward Tufte book to them. There's just so
| few good examples out there of data visualizations that respect
| basic principles of visual communication, like the ones outlined
| in this article. They generally seem to aim more for visual
| _impact_ (like the useless 3D display in the article, which you
| 've gotta admit is striking) than for _clarity_ , which I guess
| is understandable but is still too bad.
|
| (And as long as I'm griping, don't get me started on all the
| people who think a wall of text slapped into a PNG constitutes an
| "infographic.")
| piffey wrote:
| I loved this look back on data visualization from The
| Economist. You might as well.
|
| https://medium.economist.com/mistakes-weve-drawn-a-few-8cdd8...
| ubertakter wrote:
| It seems like you are complaining about graphics in the
| article, but I'm not sure. If you _read_ the article, it
| specifically talks about _why_ those are not good
| visualizations and gives pointers on developing good ones.
|
| For the 3D one specifically, right under the graphic, the
| article says: "3D has a time and a place. It can be a really
| useful way to encode thematic data on the z-axis and make
| something useful. But extruding Hubei compared to the rest of
| the areas just doesn't work. It's gratuitous and adds nothing.
| It's really hard to make any sense of relative amounts and
| that's before we even deal with foreshortening and occlusion."
| smacktoward wrote:
| I _read_ the article, thank you. It 's you who have misread
| my comment. I was praising the article for illustrating good
| principles of visual communication, and lamenting how there
| are so many people making data visualizations out there that
| don't understand this stuff.
|
| P.S. From the HN guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):
|
| _> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith... Please don't comment on
| whether someone read an article._
| ubertakter wrote:
| Hence my first sentence, "It seems like you are complaining
| about graphics in the article, but I'm not sure."
|
| First you said, "I can't count the number of times I've
| looked at a data visualization and wished I could sit down
| with the person who made it and read an Edward Tufte book
| to them."
|
| I was and am 100% on board with this comment. I think the
| same thing often.
|
| Then you said "There's just so few good examples out there
| of data visualizations that respect basic principles of
| visual communication, like the ones outlined in this
| article."
|
| I agree, the article does a pretty good job.
|
| Then, "They generally seem to aim more for visual impact
| (like the useless 3D display in the article, which you've
| gotta admit is striking) than for clarity, which I guess is
| understandable but is still too bad."
|
| I was uncertain about this statement. The previous sentence
| you start by stating "There's just so few good examples..."
| and end with "...like the ones outline in this article",
| which made it a little unclear if the one's in the article
| were good or not, but as I was reading it I was leaning to
| the good side. Then this sentence started with "They
| generally seem...", and since the end of the previous
| sentence ended talking about the "ones outlined in the
| article", I associated "They" with "the ones in the
| article". And this sentence that started with "They
| generally" was negative.
|
| Then _I_ contributed some miscommunication. When I used
| "you" in the sentence I was thinking in general terms
| (including myself) and not you personally. I think that
| might have been better stated as "If one reads the
| article...".
|
| Anyway, I was initially confused by your statement. Now I
| see what you were going for.
|
| Edits: grammar, missing words
| Stratoscope wrote:
| > _It 's you who have misread my comment._
|
| Like several others, I was also confused by your initial
| comment. At first I thought you were criticizing the
| article as an example of bad graphics and useless 3D.
|
| I am no master of communication, but there is one thing
| that stuck in my mind from a class I took many years ago:
| If I am talking to someone or writing something they read,
| and they seem to be misinterpreting or misunderstanding me,
| who is responsible for that? Is it the reader or listener,
| or is it me?
|
| The lesson was that I, the person doing the communicating,
| am responsible, not the person receiving the communication.
| It's usually not helpful to blame them for
| misunderstanding. Instead I should realize that I was
| probably unclear in some way, and do what I can to clear it
| up.
|
| Of course there are exceptions. Sometimes people are
| willfully misunderstanding and don't give you a chance to
| clarify. I remember one friend who delighted in pouncing on
| me if we were casually brainstorming and I said something
| that wasn't exactly what I really meant. When I would
| correct myself they would say "Oh no, you already said XYZ
| and you can't take it back now!"
|
| But I think those cases are unusual, and I've found it very
| helpful to avoid blaming the listener and just see how I
| can be more clear.
| djmips wrote:
| Don't get so defensive about a communication mistake that
| you made while talking about communicating effectively.
| Can't you accept it with grace that your comment could be
| misinterpreted the way you wrote it? I also juggled in my
| mind what you meant.
| codetrotter wrote:
| As someone who read your comment before reading the
| article, I took your comment to mean that the article was
| poor because it had bad graphics. That's not a criticism
| against you on my part btw, only an observation. So it
| might be that more people read your comment that same way
| due to how you phrased it.
| blattimwind wrote:
| The article has bad graphics. The question whether GGGP
| criticizes the article or not is only resolvable if you
| know both the comment and the article. If you do, the
| answer is quite obvious. If not, it is hard to predict. A
| wonderful example of entropy.
| bobwaycott wrote:
| > _... lamenting how there are so many people making data
| visualizations out there that don 't understand this
| stuff._
|
| This point was clear in your top comment.
|
| > _I was praising the article for illustrating good
| principles of visual communication..._
|
| This point was completely unclear in your top comment.
|
| I read your top comment three times, and each time made me
| feel more certain you were complaining about the site as an
| example of failing to implement good visualizations (until
| I read this comment).
| taeric wrote:
| Map visualizations are the worst. The xkcd in how they are
| typically just population maps...
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| Maps are often abused or misused, but I'd be curious to know
| why you believe map viz in general to be the worst. Done
| responsibly, they can and often are extremely insightful,
| serving purposes that no other viz can.
|
| The fact that most maps are terrible means we need to
| encourage better maps, not dismiss them entirely.
| taeric wrote:
| That argument can be used for any visualization. Used
| correctly, they are usually good.
|
| That said, I am being dramatic on my claim. It doesn't help
| that I don't have an internal map. I'm oddly good with
| directions, but I do not visualize getting from here to
| there in anything resembling a map in my mind.
|
| So, to that end, most maps that someone uses to show me
| something that it is best at, a simple time series or
| scatter plot would have done as well. Often better.
|
| That is to say, selection bias on my part. ;)
| kps wrote:
| xkcd 1138, not to be confused with THX 1138.
| bitxbit wrote:
| I think Tufte is very overrated. People who are reasonably
| comfortable with data rather have it in basic format. Tufte-
| style often takes a lot of effort to produce and the payoff
| isn't there. Consultants love it though because they can bill
| their clients for playing around for hours with charts.
| braythwayt wrote:
| Where Tufte (and others like him) is concerned, I try to
| remember the maxim _Do not follow in the footsteps of the
| sages. Seek what they sought._
|
| Slavishly reproducing his methodology ignores everything
| we've learned since then. On the other hand, for those new to
| the field, reading about his work and understanding what he
| was trying to accomplish with the tools available at the time
| can open our eyes to new ways of thinking.
|
| (As an aside, this same maxim has also helped me with things
| like programming tools. We don't need to use Lisp or
| Smalltalk for everything, but we can learn a lot from these
| languages, and especially from what their creators and
| proponents were trying to achieve with them.)
| Grue3 wrote:
| The number of cases per people statistic is silly. It might make
| sense when the virus is common around the world, but when it's
| just spreading the number of cases itself is more important. For
| example if you detected 100 people infected with a virus in some
| region, does it matter if it has 200 million people (Uttar
| Pradesh) or 10 million (Lombardy)? These political divisions are
| arbitrary anyway.
| mikedilger wrote:
| I concur. If you are concerned about catching it during your
| travels, people who don't have it are just as irrelevant as the
| number of automobiles who don't have it; thus, cases per people
| is just as irrelevant as cases per (people + automobiles).
|
| You should be concerned about the fraction of land area on
| which you are at high risk. If 100 people have it, and each
| person creates a high risk across A area (and the areas don't
| overlap), that is 100*A / country-area. Which is proportional
| to cases/area (presuming A is constant) the first statistic he
| used.
|
| EDIT: if you know you are going to interact with N people, the
| cases per population figure is relevant again.
| owl57 wrote:
| Of course you are always going to interact with _N_ people.
| Your family consists of _n0_ people, there are _n1_ people in
| your office, there are _n2_ people around you on the train,
| etc. Area calculations would matter if each infected person
| somehow densely contaminated an entire circle of a large
| diameter.
| danso wrote:
| I initially thought the same thing, but revised my thinking
| after I kept reading. I made a comment here [0], but the author
| is correct that in this case (as in almost every conceivable
| visualization case), mapping the cases-per-person value is
| necessary. The mapping of absolute counts almost completely
| hides the severity of the impact in Hubei province, and how the
| severity in _other provinces_ has a direct relationship to
| their geographic distance from Hubei.
|
| > _These political divisions are arbitrary anyway._
|
| Not sure how interstate activity and travel is
| regulated/limited in China (in normal times), but in the U.S.,
| state borders are not just some imaginary political construct.
| Laws and services - and therefore, impact to respective
| populations - can drastically differ by state lines, and
| ignoring that is a huge mistake.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22436842
| namirez wrote:
| This is interesting but sadly their service is not accessible in
| Iran, one of the hardest hit countries by Covid-19, not due to
| censorship by the Iranian government, but due to server-side
| blocking of IP addresses originating from Iran. The reason: US
| sanctions!
|
| https://twitter.com/ARTICLE19Iran/status/1231895623789576192...
| yorwba wrote:
| Also worth considering whether you really need to aggregate all
| cases in the same province. If you can get higher-resolution
| data, use it. (E.g. for each prefecture in Hubei province:
| https://news.sina.cn/project/fy2020/yq_province.shtml?provin...
| Their visualization isn't great, but someone else could use their
| data to do a better job.)
| heartbeats wrote:
| It seems like the heat map can be useful there, as long as you
| divide it by population count.
| perennate wrote:
| The article raises several good points, but inexplicably includes
| Taiwan in a map of coronavirus in China. Might as well include
| North/South Korea as well.
| danso wrote:
| This is obviously a tangent to the author's main point, but it
| is interesting because it makes me curious if the author
| purposely included Taiwan so that his blog post would not be
| banned from dissemination in China based on Chinese government
| rules on "One China": https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-
| economy/article/3033331/d...
| xvf22 wrote:
| Agreed, it's certainly significant given the context.
| mahart wrote:
| The explanation would be the desire to sell GIS products in a
| particular region.
| dang wrote:
| Please let's not go off topic into that one. A plausible
| interpretation is that someone made a mistake. Even if it
| wasn't a mistake, there's no new information here that could
| support a discussion, so we'd end up with a generic
| Taiwan/China flamewar. Such threads are bad because they're
| repetitive and predictable, and of course get nasty.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| komali2 wrote:
| Within your goals to keep HN as clean as you have
| (incredibly) done, this makes sense.
|
| I don't know how to reconcile your goals with another
| person's rejection of any kind of normalization of Chinese
| threatening of Taiwanese sovereignty. Perhaps the only option
| is for those unwilling to let articles get away with glossing
| over Taiwanese sovereignty unchallenged to get banned /
| downvoted to oblivion. I think that's acceptable, though sad,
| because I like it here.
| crmrc114 wrote:
| Its funny that for a software company ESRI basically owns the GIS
| market. I really liked how this article goes over processing a
| projection and communicating reality w/o panic and sky is falling
| insanity.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| As someone with too many GIS degrees, I feel a level of cathartic
| release in reading this and thinking that laypersons might be
| able to improve their map making skills, avoiding some of the
| more serious cartographic gotchas. It was well-written. The
| beauty of the ubiquity and greatly-improved UX of modern GIS
| tools is that everyone can dive in to doing geospatial analysis
| and building static and dynamic maps. It also means people can
| accidentally author very misleading visualizations.
|
| Despite this ESRI-backed article on the subject, I think the
| popular ESRI-driven map dashboard for Coronavirus[1] has a major
| flaw that violates the crux of this article. Dot density maps
| _MUST_ be set to scale relative to your map scale, or else you
| get nightmare scenarios like this one[2]. This is doubly true if
| the dots are varying in size (which I also think is a
| fundamentally terrible representation, because people suck at
| mentally comparing areas). If I were to modify it, I would
| probably use a choropleth-like representation. Keep the dots
| equally sized and colour them different shades of red. That way
| nobody's brain will mislead them into thinking "this larger
| circle means a larger area is all infected."
|
| [1]
| https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...
|
| [2] https://imgur.com/NPhEzk7
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| Personally I'd use an equal-population cartogram like
| https://go-cart.io/cartogram instead of a geographic
| projection, and a dot map or solid colors based on density.
|
| And per the terminology in the article, that ESRI map uses
| proportionally scaled symbols, not dots.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Thanks, yeah I used the wrong term.
| thedance wrote:
| If anyone from Esri ever reads these comments, please for the
| love of maps stop using scroll wheel and pinch to move maps
| north-south. Nobody, literally nobody, has ever wanted that,
| literally never.
| daveslash wrote:
| If you enjoyed this post, then I'd _really_ recommend _" The Wall
| Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos and Don'ts
| of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures"_ by Donna Wong.
| http://www.donawong.com/
| Thorentis wrote:
| In what data visualisation situation would you use anything other
| than an area equal map? What advantage does the web projection
| offer over area equal?
| nwallin wrote:
| Conformal map projections are important for navigation. Equal
| area projections can be conformal over small areas, but not
| over large areas.
|
| Web Mercator Auxiliary Sphere is a good default for a software
| application to use. It is global, meaning that regardless of
| what data you dump onto it, it will show up on the map. It is
| conformal, which means if you zoom in, shapes will be
| preserved. If you zoom in on a town square that is actually
| square, it will be square on the map, too. North is up in all
| locations.
|
| That being said, it's only a good default because if you users
| aren't knowledgeable enough to select the right projection, web
| Mercator aux sphere is the least bad, lowest common denominator
| option. When you as a user choose what projection to use to
| visualize your data, it's usually wrong to select web Mercator
| aux sphere. But if you were never going to make the effort to
| select the right projection anyway, it's not a completely
| terrible default.
|
| Note that web Mercator is different from web Mercator aux
| sphere. Web Mercator is not conformal, which makes it pretty
| useless. Many people use the terms web Mercator and web
| Mercator aux sphere interchangeably, which they shouldn't.
| heartbeats wrote:
| >We're mapping a human health tragedy that may get way worse
| before it subsides. Do we really want the map to be screaming
| bright red? Red [...] can connotates [sic] danger, and death,
| which is still statistically extremely rare for coronavirus.
|
| This really seems like a case of "it's not a bug, it's a
| feature". It may be rare (so far, anyway), but few would argue
| "danger and death" is an inaccurate characterization.
| user5994461 wrote:
| Incidentally, I made a demo app with proportionally sized circles
| like they suggest, and it allows to move day-by-day to see the
| progression. https://coronaprogress.com/
|
| I am gonna update the numbers for today.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Very helpful! I was just looking for this. Thank you
| arkades wrote:
| Could you allow the viewer to select the color of the case
| indicator? Or maybe just add a contrasting outline on the
| circles? I'm a not-at-all-uncommon type of colorblind, and I
| find it very, very difficult to make out red dots on green
| satellite image.
| user5994461 wrote:
| Try these. Which one(s) can you distinguish better?
|
| https://coronaprogress.com/?color=FEFE62
|
| https://coronaprogress.com/?color=D35BF7
|
| https://coronaprogress.com/?color=DC3220
|
| https://coronaprogress.com/?color=005AB5
| owl57 wrote:
| Not the GP, but have protanopia.
|
| FEFE62 > D35BF7 > 005AB5 > DC3220 [?] default.
| arkades wrote:
| Same as owl57, "FEFE62 > D35BF7 > 005AB5 > DC3220 [?]
| default."
| JoshTko wrote:
| Thanks for making this. When you are zoomed out at the world
| level it's hard to differentiate UK with a few cases vs. Italy
| which has 300+ cases.
| danso wrote:
| Very nice and well-written writeup. Here's one graf that randomly
| provoked some thoughts:
|
| > _But looks can be deceptive. The fact that it looks okay is
| hiding a dark secret that, if you're not aware of the fact, won't
| even get noticed. The map is using totals (absolute values).
| There are very very few golden rules in cartography but this is
| one of them: you cannot map totals using a choropleth thematic
| mapping technique. The reason is simple. Each of our areas on the
| map is a different size, and has a different number of people in
| it. These two innate characteristics of all thematic maps means
| you simply cannot compare like for like across the map._
|
| > _The label tells us that Hubei region has over 65,000 cases of
| coronavirus. It sounds a lot. But does Hubei have 100,000 people,
| or possibly 100,000,000 people living there?_
|
| I definitely agree with the author: that there are very few
| "golden rules" in visualization, and that _not_ depicting
| absolute numbers in a choropleth map is one of them. However, the
| author does an excellent job (with a bar chart and revised map)
| showing how this anti-pattern _severely_ obfuscates how much the
| Hubei region is an extreme outlier.
| platz wrote:
| I can see why people might be mislead, but absolute value is a
| very understandable metric.
|
| If you start moving to things like per-capita, i actually think
| that has the potential to be more confusing for more numbers of
| people.
|
| so yes, absolute values will be highly correlated with
| population, but again it just depends on what you really want
| to highlight and communicate
|
| Maybe you really do want the absolute value.
| danso wrote:
| I guess I'm having a hard time thinking of reasons why
| absolute value is more important than rate, especially in
| this scenario, when we're measuring the impact of an
| infectious disease that spreads person-to-person. I suppose
| in the hypothetical situation, where there are 10,000 cases
| in Wyoming and 10,000 cases in New Jersey. A choropleth map
| by rate would shade Wyoming 15-18 times darker than New
| Jersey. And this would obfuscate the likely reality that
| 10,000 cases in New Jersey is _imminently_ a far bigger story
| - because N.J. is not only 15-18 times more populous, but ~25
| times more dense. (The fact that Wyoming is ~15x bigger by
| land mass would make the issue worse, in terms of visual
| distraction)
|
| But I'm not sure how shading this by absolute totals - in
| which case, Wyoming and N.J. would be the same shade - would
| provide significantly more value? Sure, N.J.'s situation
| wouldn't be effectively invisible in the totals map, compared
| to the rates map. But now we have to imagine a scenario in
| which a person-to-person virus managed to sicken so many
| people (proportionally speaking) in such a large rural state
| compared to an extremely urban state. It's very hard to
| imagine a scenario in which we _don 't_ want to focus
| attention on Wyoming. For 10,000 Wyoming people to be
| infected - and only 10,000 affected in New Jersey - would
| almost certainly mean that the infection's original epicenter
| is Wyoming, and that someone from Wyoming had direct contact
| via travel with a New Jersey resident, (especially if Wyoming
| and N.J. are outliers in terms of absolute totals by state).
| platz wrote:
| I'm not saying absolute is necessarily better than rate.
| I'm saying that it's a choice that highlights different
| information.
|
| there is no objective right answer, and it's about intent
| of the communicator. in this case, rate may very well be
| what the intent needs to be.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Maybe you really do want the absolute value.
|
| What for though? What can you tell from that value, other
| than the value itself?
|
| You cannot tell whether it's common or rare, you cannot tell
| the risk of anyone in a certain area to be affected, you will
| have a hard time showing trends because people will react to
| the phenomena and avoid a certain high-risk area which will
| then result in fewer cases in that area.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| When the presence of the contagion is the risk, absolute
| numbers communicate a lot. Relative counts are less
| meaningful right now.
|
| The majority of meaningful information received from such a
| chart right now is the presence or absence of the virus.
| Secondary is the number of cases to indicate the stage of
| spread (e.g. 1 suggests maybe an outlier, 2-10 suggests
| early stages of contact spreading, etc).
|
| Communicating information with an inherently exponential
| growth rate is just entirely different beast.
| danso wrote:
| Why is "has province reported any cases?" the most
| meaningful information? Ignoring the current reality of
| every province having reported cases since January, a
| simple boolean shading would obfuscate nearly every vital
| insight realistically conceivable. If it were the case
| that 3 months after the Hubei outbreak, Hubei had 100,000
| reported cases, and all bordering provinces had 1-100,
| that is an extremely important distinction to make when
| assessing the effectiveness of containment policies
| (and/or the trustworthiness of official government
| numbers).
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| I agree with what you're saying about reporting cases in
| China. My point was in the context of reporting elsewhere
| in the world where most areas have zero cases and so
| having cases or not is the most important information,
| followed by the number of cases. I should have been
| clearer.
| im3w1l wrote:
| "How likely is the area to infect other areas"
|
| "How many hosts does the virus have in which to mutate"
|
| "How much will the global economy be affected by the cases
| in this area"
| djannzjkzxn wrote:
| IMO, during the first half of an epidemic, when a small portion
| of the population is infected and infections are growing
| exponentially, it makes sense to use the absolute number of
| infections. Then later when infection is widespread and the
| curve looks logistic, it makes sense to give the proportion of
| infected. I think we are clearly in the first half when it
| comes to coronavirus.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| With time it makes sense to report the number of current
| cases as the cumulative number includes more and more people
| who are now cured.
| Eliezer wrote:
| For this application I think you really want one of those maps
| that equalizes area and population!
| btomtom5 wrote:
| As a point of reference for how deadly the corona virus is, you
| are more likely to die by murder in New York city than you are to
| die by corona virus in Hubei, assuming a death rate of 2.5
| percent. The murder rate in NYC is 5 per 100K whereas the
| infection rate in Hubei is 111 per 100K.
|
| Edit: This isn't really a fair assessment. See the comments
| below.
| croddin wrote:
| Yes but the New York numbers are for a year, the Hubei numbers
| are for about 2 months and are increasing.
| three_seagrass wrote:
| The infection rate is still unknown, so spreading
| misinformation like this is not helpful.
|
| It took just 1 person to infect 600 people on a 2,700 passenger
| cruise ship, many of which happened even after quarantine and
| medical staff were introduced.
|
| That means that 1.9 million NYC people can be infected 38,000
| people can killed from just one person.
| btomtom5 wrote:
| Great point. Thanks for correcting me.
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(page generated 2020-02-27 23:00 UTC)