More Dangerous - Inflammatory Tweets OR Bias Graphs & Data?
140 Character Rants vs Cherry-picked Visualizations
Nickolas Thompson, the Editor and Chief at Wired, shared this lovely graph on LinkedIN this weekend. His article (link under the cover image) and headline imply a level of negligence on the part of Elon Musk. Perhaps?
To be honest and direct — this graph does NOTHING to prove that. I am tempted to argue it does the exact opposite, ONLY I am experienced enough to take one look at this chart and dismiss it entirely. Why?
Why indeed? Why is this only a six month graph? At least that is a rounded (common) time frame, but Tesla and Twitter have been around a good long time. Why does the y-axis start at $240? Yes that captures the full volatility of the trend, but it also serves to exaggerate that volatility. These two factors alone would cause me to reject this graph.
But also How? How do random little “>” & “^” marks on a graph argue anything? Check that graph — they don’t correlate! The market goes both up & down randomly after each “event”. Something it also does when we are given a period with no event at all.
If you compare Tesla’s YTD results to the S&P500, you find some interesting things. Tesla stock has been basically flat. So has the S&P. Tesla has shown about twice the volatility of the average. Does that really seem extreme? One company is twice as volatile as five hundred averaged together…
For the record, YTD is arbitrary, too. It does paint a picture of a stock “hanging” around $310 a share. But that has a good chance of being misleading, too. The y-axis here is much better as is the inclusion of a solid benchmark. BUT — I am not arguing for a side in this argument. I am arguing that the offending graph is NONSENSE.
So which NONSENSE is worse?
Thompson’s graph or Musk’s tweets? Let me lay out a few considerations, but I will leave it for you to decide.
- Musk has more fame and authority.
- Thompson’s use of numbers is clearly an attempt to create authority.
- When Tesla moves 10% — small fortunes are lost & made BUT by people who should know the risks they are taking.
- Would Musk be more in the wrong if his tweets included bias data visualizations?
- Would I have reacted to a Wired or Thompson tweet without a graph?
- Does Twitter have more business authority than LinkedIN?
The answer to #5 is NO. So perhaps I am victimized by some cognitive bias here as well. OR perhaps using data and graphs to make a point increases relative authority?
Perhaps Musk, Trump, and others should clean up their Twitter behavior? But perhaps Thompson should consider his LinkedIN behavior as well? OR perhaps all of us should learn to always do further research and employ wider perspective before taking any such statement for granted?
I’ll go with the last one. What say you? Leave comments below. And thanks for reading!
