Context
Numbers and graphs can have a lot of influence on the buying behavior of customers. But it can also mislead people into important choices in politics. It is important that people learn how to read graphs and statistics and not blindly believe them.
Numbers and graphs can have a lot of influence on the buying behavior of customers. But it can also mislead people into important choices in politics. It is important that people learn how to read graphs and statistics and not blindly believe them.
Relevance
Figures, graphs and other statistics are all around us to prove certain points of view. But almost none of these speak the full truth. It is very easy to manipulate numbers and statistics.
Concept: children's book
One of the reasons I chose to design a children's book as the medium is that Richard Feynman says the best way to understand something is to explain it. Pretend to be explaining the topic to an eight-year-old child. (Nanna Vium, 2017).
The children's book is about the wrong use of statistics. In the book everything goes wrong, after which it is explained why it is not correct. The wrong statistics are about, for example:
• Mix up correlation and causality
• Not starting from 0 on the x- or y-axis on purpose
• The lurking variable
• Cherry picking: Intentionally incorrectly zooming in on just a small part of the graph.
• Mix up cause and effect
• Extract facts from a non-representative sample
• Mix up correlation and causality
• Not starting from 0 on the x- or y-axis on purpose
• The lurking variable
• Cherry picking: Intentionally incorrectly zooming in on just a small part of the graph.
• Mix up cause and effect
• Extract facts from a non-representative sample
Research
In order to write a good story, I researched storytelling. Among other things, I looked at 'The hero's journey' by Joseph Campbell, Freytag's pyramid and Aristotles. I also did a couple of experiments were I made an interactive game of the stoyr and experimented with pop-up 3D graphs.
Pop-Up
The book has a couple of pop-up graphs. This is to highlight the graphs and statistics in the book.
Protagonist
The protagonist is Elvira (Dutch: Elf-vier-a = Elf-four-a). She is eight years old, she has a very large garden. She is adventurous and helpful. In the beginning she knows little about numbers, but not enought about statistics, therefore the octopus is able to deceive her with wrong statistics.
Antagonist
The antagonist in the story is an octopus. The octopus shows wrong statistics, it does not do this because it is evil by definition, but because it does not know any better. He wants to prove his point of view with graphs he has seen on Visboek (Dutch: Visboek = Fishbook which sounds similar to Facebook).
The Nightingale
One of the side characters is a nightingale. This nightingale is based on Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale was a British nurse, social reformer, statist and mystic. With statistics, she convinced the government that most soldiers died from lack of proper care for the sick, and not from acts of war. She developed a diagram to clearly present the relevant data, the polar diagram. (Wikipedia, 2020)
The book has a couple of pop-up graphs. This is to highlight the graphs and statistics in the book.
Protagonist
The protagonist is Elvira (Dutch: Elf-vier-a = Elf-four-a). She is eight years old, she has a very large garden. She is adventurous and helpful. In the beginning she knows little about numbers, but not enought about statistics, therefore the octopus is able to deceive her with wrong statistics.
Antagonist
The antagonist in the story is an octopus. The octopus shows wrong statistics, it does not do this because it is evil by definition, but because it does not know any better. He wants to prove his point of view with graphs he has seen on Visboek (Dutch: Visboek = Fishbook which sounds similar to Facebook).
The Nightingale
One of the side characters is a nightingale. This nightingale is based on Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale was a British nurse, social reformer, statist and mystic. With statistics, she convinced the government that most soldiers died from lack of proper care for the sick, and not from acts of war. She developed a diagram to clearly present the relevant data, the polar diagram. (Wikipedia, 2020)
The story
Elvira is standing in her flower garden. She walks around the garden and talks a bit about numbers. When she arrives at the greenhouse, tomatoes and cucumbers are counted. After that she steps out of the greenhouse and comes to another part of the garden, in this part of the garden she finds 2 out of the 3 flower dried out. After taking the sample, she thinks 33% of the flowers are dried out, while in the background you can see that all the other flowers are still in bloom. Based on this wrong sample, she wants it to rain.
But how would she manage to do that? When there are many umbrellas, it always rains! Elvira runs home to get her umbrella, when she puts it up, there is no rain. After thinking briefly, she thinks it must be the quantity. Her plan is to run to the market, where there are many people. If they all put up their umbrellas, it should be fine.
When she runs through the forest, she falls into a pool of water, which turns out to be a large pond. There is a large octopus in this pond. The octopus lies about statistics. He tries to convince Elvira that the number of fish has decreased a lot, which turns out not to be the case.
When she crawls out of the pond, she meets a nightingale. The nightingale explains what the octopus said is wrong. The numbers on the left axis of his graph do not start at 0, but at 50. The real graph will look very different. The nightingale says that the octopus took the graphs from Fishbook (=Facebook) and that these are not always truthful. When they arrive at the market, where a newspaper with the weather forecast can be seen in the background, people put up their umbrellas because it starts to rain. Elvira thinks it is coincidental, but when she shows her joy and explains her plan to the nightingale, the nightingale tells her where the problem is. Elvira buys a fish at the market to give to the octopus, when she gives the fish to him, she explains to him why his graphs are wrong. She walks back to the dried-out flowers and sees her own mistake. All flowers are in bloom again.
Elvira is standing in her flower garden. She walks around the garden and talks a bit about numbers. When she arrives at the greenhouse, tomatoes and cucumbers are counted. After that she steps out of the greenhouse and comes to another part of the garden, in this part of the garden she finds 2 out of the 3 flower dried out. After taking the sample, she thinks 33% of the flowers are dried out, while in the background you can see that all the other flowers are still in bloom. Based on this wrong sample, she wants it to rain.
But how would she manage to do that? When there are many umbrellas, it always rains! Elvira runs home to get her umbrella, when she puts it up, there is no rain. After thinking briefly, she thinks it must be the quantity. Her plan is to run to the market, where there are many people. If they all put up their umbrellas, it should be fine.
When she runs through the forest, she falls into a pool of water, which turns out to be a large pond. There is a large octopus in this pond. The octopus lies about statistics. He tries to convince Elvira that the number of fish has decreased a lot, which turns out not to be the case.
When she crawls out of the pond, she meets a nightingale. The nightingale explains what the octopus said is wrong. The numbers on the left axis of his graph do not start at 0, but at 50. The real graph will look very different. The nightingale says that the octopus took the graphs from Fishbook (=Facebook) and that these are not always truthful. When they arrive at the market, where a newspaper with the weather forecast can be seen in the background, people put up their umbrellas because it starts to rain. Elvira thinks it is coincidental, but when she shows her joy and explains her plan to the nightingale, the nightingale tells her where the problem is. Elvira buys a fish at the market to give to the octopus, when she gives the fish to him, she explains to him why his graphs are wrong. She walks back to the dried-out flowers and sees her own mistake. All flowers are in bloom again.
Links
The full pdf of the children's book can be found here.
My full research paper (in dutch) can be found here.
Sources
• Huff, D. (1954.). How to lie with statistics. New York . W. W. Norton & Company.
• Vium, N. (2017.). 4 stappen om een onderwerp onder de knie te krijgen. Geraadpleegd op 15 juli 2020, van https://wibnet.nl/mens/hersenen/intelligentie/4-stappen-om-een-onderwerp-onder-de-knie-te-krijgen
• Wikipedia. (2020.) Florence Nightingale. Geraadpleegd op 27 juli 2020, van https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale
