Jan. 7-13 issue of The Economist

[rachmaninoff]

Anyone who has the Jan. 7-13 issue of The Economist, look at the graphic on the lower-right corner of p. 70.

Source: Wikipedia

:uhh:

 

[zoobyshoe]

You're saying they used a graphic from the wikipedia?

 

[rachmaninoff]

edit:

I forgot that Economist has different national editions, I was looking at the US version, in different versions look for the article "Bayes rules" in the Science & Technology section (might be on a different page number).

 

[rachmaninoff]

You're saying they used a graphic from the wikipedia?

At first I thought they just based their graphic on wikipedia information. But looking more closely at the graphic, Economist's scales are identical to the ones on wiki, though the colors were changed.

Compare with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Normal_distribution_pdf.png (first three series)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Poisson_distribution_PMF.png (first two)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gamma_distribution_pdf.png (first three)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pareto_distributionPDF.png (one and three)

all linked from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_distribution

:grumpy:

 

[rachmaninoff]

They definitely used wiki graphics!

Look at the 'segmentation' of the Poisson distribution plot in the Economist. Compare the locations of the segments with the wiki graphic. Same image, with some photoshop magic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Poisson_distribution_PMF.png

 

[zoobyshoe]

I don't read The Economist. I'm just trying to figure out what you're wanting people to notice.

I take it you feel this is a bad thing for them to use Wikipedia as a reference?

 

[rachmaninoff]

I take it you feel this is a bad thing for them to use Wikipedia as a reference?

As an only reference, yes.

 

[berkeman]

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:N...bution_pdf.png

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License."

 

[rachmaninoff]

Oh I know it's legal. I think it's ridiculous that a major publication titled "Economist" couldn't find a more reliable reference for statistics methods than wikipedia.

 

[zoobyshoe]

As an only reference, yes.

Yeah, I agree that's odd.

 

[Jelfish]

I don't have The Economist, but the images that you linked were just distribution graphs. How are they used in the Economist article? Was it just something like "Here's what a Poisson distribution looks like." If so, I don't see any problem with using Wikipedia's graphic.

 

[rachmaninoff]

It just seems so unprofessional. You think of journalists of doing "real" investigations and thoroughly researching their subjects... by contrast wikipedia is a pit full of inaccuracies. And the part about them being too lazy to plot their own graphs (a two minute task)?

 

[Jelfish]

If you looked at that graph and thought it to be accurate, especially for your purposes, what journalistic integrity are you threatening? Besides - what real investigation is a journalist going to do about a probability distribution? At least with the folks at wikipedia, people (plural) who actually understand the material are more likely to write and edit the articles instead of a journalist who might know nothing of the subject at the time. Also, just because the writer sites wikipedia as a source doesn't mean he/she doesn't know enough about the topic to know that the images he/she took from wikipedia are reliable.

Have you ever seen textbooks that make sine waves by juxtaposing halves of ovals? I wish they would use wikipedia.