Great article. I would suggest correcting the sentence "On the horizontal axis in each panel you see GDP per capita..." as what we see is a logarithm of the GDP per capita. While this doesn't challenge any of the messages Max is making, one will get a very distorted perception if one assumes that all those metrics are linearly correlated with the GDPpc instead of the logarithm of the GDPpc. In practice, if we consider increasing GDPpc by 1000USD on the left side of the graphs it will shift the point by 30% of the whole range, while if we consider the reduction of the rightmost points by 1000 USD the shift will be ~1%.
This misreading happened to me on the first read and I have also heard other people saying that various metrics are correlated with the GDP, referring to this article.
Another even more nitpicky comment: Although I understand that Max is simply reusing graphics from an external source, I should note that one might be deceived by the presentation in two other cases: - in graphs 2 and 3 as the vertical axis is also logarithmic (implying power dependence on GDP). - in the first and the last two graphs' Y-axis doesn't start from zero
Great article.
I would suggest correcting the sentence "On the horizontal axis in each panel you see GDP per capita..." as what we see is a logarithm of the GDP per capita.
While this doesn't challenge any of the messages Max is making, one will get a very distorted perception if one assumes that all those metrics are linearly correlated with the GDPpc instead of the logarithm of the GDPpc. In practice, if we consider increasing GDPpc by 1000USD on the left side of the graphs it will shift the point by 30% of the whole range, while if we consider the reduction of the rightmost points by 1000 USD the shift will be ~1%.
This misreading happened to me on the first read and I have also heard other people saying that various metrics are correlated with the GDP, referring to this article.
Another even more nitpicky comment:
Although I understand that Max is simply reusing graphics from an external source, I should note that one might be deceived by the presentation in two other cases:
- in graphs 2 and 3 as the vertical axis is also logarithmic (implying power dependence on GDP).
- in the first and the last two graphs' Y-axis doesn't start from zero