Politics, Social Media & the Web

[Zorro]

Way back when everyone with a web site thought they were the next Bill Gates. Today any nut with a URL and Facebook page thinks they can be President.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michele-bachmann-officially-running-for-president/2011/06/21/AGPMS4eH_story.html

Volume of Twitter followers does not translate into electability (see Sarah Palin) and just because your inner circle and bunch of big boned women love you doesn't mean you should run for the highest office in the land. But I guess if you're an Obama fan this is the best news of the day.

[StanUpshaw]

http://i.imgur.com/jHSlA.png
http://2012twit.com/

[keithy_19]

:glurps:

keithradzion.wordpress.com

[Bob Impact]

As someone who's primary job involves complex data visualization, that chart is fucking horrendous.

[cougarjake13]

who's that last guy

[StanUpshaw]

As someone who's primary job involves complex data visualization, that chart is fucking horrendous.

I don't know what you're talking about. Bar graphs and exponents go together like bagels and cream cheese.

[Bob Impact]

I really wish I had the energy to graph out how right you are but that fucking site rotates it's completely pointless charts so i either have to refresh the page constantly or wait for it to come back around again.

Let's put it this way, the difference between the number of followers between Gingrich (rounding because it doesn't change the numbers enough to worry about and it's quarter to 4am atm) and the last guy on the list is a 1,280,000 of a factor of 650. The difference between Gingrich and Palin (600k) is 70,000 followers, or a factor of 2.16). Point is, the real chart wouldn't fit in a pretty infographic so they intentionally chose to pick a format that completely misrepresents the data for the sake of either laziness, political favoritism (Gingrinch's bar should be literally twice as large as everyone else for total followers) or just because they're awful at what they do. At any rate, thanks for the example I'm going to use during my "how to make charts that don't suck" meeting/workshop at work.