r/dataisbeautiful • u/Data_digger1 • 3d ago

OC [OC] Comparing the combined GDPs of China and India to the US GDP at that time

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u/moderngamer327 3d ago

Log graphs are always garbage because they are incredibly unintuitive. It’s much easier to gain information at a glance from the original

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u/mantellaaurantiaca 3d ago

You're wrong. Log graphs handle growth rates much better. Here you cannot even tell the order of magnitude difference at the beginning of the timeline.

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u/moderngamer327 3d ago

Yeah but the beginning of the timeline is the least relevant part of this graph

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u/DevelopmentSad2303 3d ago

They are pretty intuitive, you just have to spend 5 minutes learning how they work

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u/moderngamer327 3d ago

I understand how they work but that doesn’t make them more intuitive

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u/DevelopmentSad2303 3d ago

What do you mean by intuitive? They do an excellent job showing the magnitude of difference between two data sets. It's very intuitive for the story it tells.

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u/SomewhereImDead 2d ago

in what context

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u/DevelopmentSad2303 2d ago

What do you mean? If you want to show the magnitude of differences rather than absolute differences then log is more intuitive for that. Otherwise you have to look here and think "hmm, in 1990 USA is at 5 while India + China is at .3 , so that's 20x or about a magnitude and a half different.