23 January 2009

More graphs to enlighten or confuse us


From the DarwinCatholic blog

This graph is said to represent various US presidents' popularity polls, supposedly gathered when they entered office and then at odd times during their tenure. I don't know how they separate the persuasiveness of the media of the time from anything else, but maybe that is what is being measured anyway. Hmm, I see a problem here but am too dull to figure out the answer.

It looks like all of these guys started fairly high and wound up fairly low, although the Bushes seem to have had a fling at stardom before crashing and burning, and Clinton (this is why I am skeptical of the information going in to this graph) actually started in the middle and went up, never down. Hmm, I don't remember things that way. Maybe we finally got used to fraud and chicanery at the top.

I don't remember Truman being so loathed either, but then I was only a gawky 12 year old. On the other hand I did read Time and Newsweek, which in those days were relatively conservative, though we didn't know that until they took a hard turn to the left some time in the 80s I think. And what was the reason for the quick and really drastic changes of H.W. Bush? He did a good thing in the 1st Gulf War, but then what happened.

Will we be able to use the same graph for Obama? If you start at 90% + and go up, that sort of makes the other guys look really bad or distorts the whole graph.

2 comments:

Edits said...

I would like to see this graph updated with Obama on it!

Ken & Carol said...

Thanks for your comment but after looking at this again I suspect there is too much GIGO and adding Obama will only make that problem worse. Cheers.

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