{"id":24364,"date":"2010-06-04T10:30:26","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T15:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=24364"},"modified":"2012-07-08T01:32:54","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T06:32:54","slug":"bp-truthfully-misrepresents-how-much-oil-they-are-recovering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/06\/04\/bp-truthfully-misrepresents-how-much-oil-they-are-recovering\/","title":{"rendered":"BP Truthfully Misrepresents How Much Oil they are Recovering"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nathan Yau, at Flowing Data, <a href=\"http:\/\/flowingdata.com\/2010\/05\/26\/bp-tries-to-mislead-you-with-graphs\/\" target=\"_blank\">calls BP out<\/a> on a piece of data representation trickery.\u00a0 In <a href=\"http:\/\/bp.concerts.com\/gom\/kentwells_update24052010.htm\" target=\"_blank\">a video on the BP website<\/a> explaining the progress they were making cleaning up the oil, Kent Wells offered the following graph:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/4641418975_c4d6883eee_o_8gkxlampxecc08kgk00wg4wgo_hcjovh1zwfksw0kw4skcow8g_th.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24366\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/4641418975_c4d6883eee_o_8gkxlampxecc08kgk00wg4wgo_hcjovh1zwfksw0kw4skcow8g_th.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"494\" height=\"308\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/4641418975_c4d6883eee_o_8gkxlampxecc08kgk00wg4wgo_hcjovh1zwfksw0kw4skcow8g_th.png 550w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/4641418975_c4d6883eee_o_8gkxlampxecc08kgk00wg4wgo_hcjovh1zwfksw0kw4skcow8g_th-500x311.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 494px) 100vw, 494px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The bars represent oil collected over time.\u00a0 But, as Yau points out, the data offered by Wells is cumulative.\u00a0 It&#8217;s not the case that each consecutive day (May 16 to May 23) they are collecting more oil.\u00a0 Instead, each collective day they have collected more oil <em>overall<\/em>.\u00a0 If they keep collecting oil, we should expect nothing less.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of showing the data cumulatively, they could have presented how much oil they collected each individual day.\u00a0 But the data, in that case, doesn&#8217;t look as good.\u00a0 Yau put this together:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/bp-oil-collection-2-few.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24367\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/bp-oil-collection-2-few.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"540\" height=\"307\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/bp-oil-collection-2-few.jpg 540w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/06\/bp-oil-collection-2-few-500x284.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This graph suggests that BP&#8217;s collection of oil is diminishing and makes viewers want to know why.\u00a0 The graph they offered, however, hides their decreasing efficacy.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p>Lisa Wade is a\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\/followers\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Lisa-Wade-PhD\/174350419354908\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nathan Yau, at Flowing Data, calls BP out on a piece of data representation trickery.\u00a0 In a video on the BP website explaining the progress they were making cleaning up the oil, Kent Wells offered the following graph: The bars represent oil collected over time.\u00a0 But, as Yau points out, the data offered by Wells [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[126,23703,274],"class_list":["post-24364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disaster","tag-marketing","tag-methodsuse-of-data"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24364"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49400,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24364\/revisions\/49400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}