While searching tableau
public, I came across an interesting data visualization of the amount of forest
fires per year in Italy. Being Italian myself, I found this visualization to
catch my attention immediately because of the headline, “Italy Burns: The Business
of Summer Wild Fires.”
Link:
Firstly, the title itself
contradicts the actual data visualization (highlighted in red box – although the
title is in Italian, I translated it into English), given that the chart only
shows the amount of forest fires per year. Yet, in surrounding text around the
chart, the creator claims “the main cause of 7,700 detected [forest fires] per
year in Italy in the last 20 years – which burnt a surface as big as Latium –
is arson for profit reason.” Where exactly did the creator get this
information? There are no links or sources to back her fact up, yet she makes an
incredible assumption that these fires are happening for the sole reason of
profit.
How does this affect the
data viz aspect? Considering the claim and the title, the data viz does not
even match up. In her chart, the creator shows only the amount of fires per
year. Nowhere on the chart are there any profit numbers to back up her title.
Moreover, the chart itself is flawed, too.
Like discussed in class, it
is crucial to look at a bare chart – a chart that without numbers to accompany
it, will still make sense. If you take away the numbers above each little fire
bar, the chart is very unclear as too exactly how many fires are happening each
year (highlighted in green box). Yes, we can see that there are fluctuations in
numbers over the years, but we are left to guess what exactly the creator is
trying to compare. A more appropriate chart to show data over time would have
been a line chart, which I feel the creator should have chosen instead.
I commend the creator’s
efforts in attempting to use a fancy fire bar chart in order to show the amount
of fires per year. She did start with a baseline of zero, which ensures that
the data is correct and does not mislead us with false information.
Overall, I feel the creator
should have chosen a different chart (line chart) and should have included
figures of dollar amounts that she feels are attributed to arson profit gain. If
the story truly is about the “business of summer wildfires,” then the creator
should have found a way to show the audience rather than tell us without some
sort of source or number value to accompany the data visualization.
This is a good example of how not to represent data. The author has no basis for claiming these fires are created for profit, not without supporting data. However I think without the numbers it still shows enough to be understandable at a basic level, you can still see which years have higher or lower rates of fires but in this case the trends that the author is trying to relate these too are either false or irrelevant. Nice find, you should send the author a message to give supporting data!
ReplyDeleteThis was a really good graph to analyze because there is evidently a lot to pick apart about it. The supporting data issue is huge and I liked that you referred back to it because it's so crucial, and also a red flag for bad journalism. One thing I also thought about this chart was that when you look at it the amount of fires per year changes so much and doesn't follow a pattern at all, it's not really increasing or decreasing necessarily so it seemed kind of pointless to turn this data into a visual. I thought you chose a great chart and did a wonderful analysis.
ReplyDeleteI agree 100% that she screwed up big time for 1. Not backing up her claim and 2. Not factoring it into her data. I agree the flaming chart was creative but a simple line chart would have sufficed.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree that this data viz seems to be a great example of how data viz can be used to try and mislead. I like your point about showing and not telling. I think you captured the essence of data visualization with that. I like how you envision the visualization without the figures- I agree that it becomes terribly confusing as to what is really being said. The fact that she does not back up her claim by using her data viz seems to contradict the reason why anyone would make a data viz in the first place.
ReplyDelete