Michał

My #dataviz -adjacent hot take: Ordinary people don't have a sense of scale for area units that aren't m^2 or sqft (in USA). Too often km^2 is confused with 1000 m^2. Hectares/acres are nebulous too.

My solution: don't measure area in football fields or Californias - just present equivalent square side length.

For instance: Denmark will reforest 4000 km^2 of its presumably least productive farmland. This would be a 63x63 km square.

#math #science #journalism #datavisualization

Nov 24, 2024 at 1:02pmWeb
Show threadAxel RauschmayerNov 25, 2024
@RicoElectrico Great idea! Football fields etc. never worked for me.
Show threadErwin WesselsNov 25, 2024
@RicoElectrico @rauschma so much this!
Show threadHCS_RONov 25, 2024

@RicoElectrico Fully agree! When I read about 4000km^2 I'm usually decomposing it into something like 50km x 80km to get a better intuitive understanding. Would be great if the writer already did it.

And of course the same goes for volumes. (No "Olympic swimming pools" please!)

Show threadjoostdhNov 25, 2024
@RicoElectrico This is exactly how I visualise these numbers for myself!
Show thread@frank609Nov 25, 2024
@RicoElectrico I always do that. For example, I was recently reading about size of territory gains/losses in Ukraine, and they were given in square kilometers. In my head, I took a rough square root to get an idea of the length of a side to visualize how big of an area these represented. But not everyone is a geek used to doing square roots in their head like I am, so it would make things easier if they gave the length of a side like you describe (in much the same way as some grocery stores list "cost per ounce" next to prices of products).