Recent comments in /f/dataisbeautiful

VikThorior t1_jc9koih wrote

Reply to [OC] I used the Democracy Index (by The Economist Intelligence Unit) to show that the world is getting less and less democratic by b_imre

Weird choice to weigh the democratic index by the GDP. The 10 richest western countries make up for ~40% of the world GDP, but only ~9% of the world population.

I would understand not weighing by population as it would give too much weight to some countries, but the GDP does the same in a much worse way.

For the population, there is an reason for doing so: it gives the Democracy Index of an average world citizen. But for the GDP, it gives the Democracy Index of an average... US$.

Moreover, GDP (par capita) and Democracy Index are correlated, so it's problematic to weigh one by the other.

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GibtEsKeinenGott t1_jc9flt7 wrote

Reply to comment by DoeCommaJohn in [OC] I used the Democracy Index (by The Economist Intelligence Unit) to show that the world is getting less and less democratic by b_imre

How do you know the people they choose are even experts if they refuse to reveal who these people are? I understand the difference between bad data and unscientific data and to me that is a distinction without a difference. Unless we know who these people are and can clearly see the metrics they are using to objectively measure the level of democracy in these countries, then we are just believing their claims on faith. It is like if a poll of 10 "random" soda experts is published where they rank flavors of various drinks and Coke comes out on top, yet the authors of the poll fail to mention that 8 of them don't like the taste of lemon and 6 of them happen to work for Coca-Cola. That might be important information.

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DoeCommaJohn t1_jc9ei3m wrote

Reply to comment by Jeffcor13 in [OC] I used the Democracy Index (by The Economist Intelligence Unit) to show that the world is getting less and less democratic by b_imre

It’s a lot easier to support democracy in theory than in practice. Are you really going to support democracy over a little bit of gerrymandering if it means your party wins? If your party is anti-democratic, are you really going to vote for the other guys?

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