Chinese Humour

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Elok
I don't understand economics, but I'm told that it's only a matter of time before North Korea alienates enough people to cut off foreign aid, at which point it will collapse like a house of cards and China will be flooded with refugees and crime. How well will China deal with that?

I think I'll be getting shares in land mine companies.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Elok
How well will China deal with that?

Piece of cake homes:

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by DanS


The scale doesn't start at 0 and therefore it is biased. I realize the way you describe is how most of the stock/finance charts are given, but that doesn't make it non-biased. Rather, it just means that most of these charts accentuate small movements.

It is important. Not silly at all.

[:) Smiley]

Originally posted by Elok
I don't understand economics, but I'm told that it's only a matter of time before North Korea alienates enough people to cut off foreign aid, at which point it will collapse like a house of cards and China will be flooded with refugees and crime. How well will China deal with that?

The population of China is about 50 times that of North Korea. Even if the entire North Korean population were to empty out into China, it'd be hardly noticeable.

quote:

Because there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yes there is. The Chinese are paying for ours.

They may be paying for our lunch, but come evening we may be going hungry.

I'm not saying that a perpetual free lunch isn't possible though. It's just that it's all going to be Chinese Food.

What do I mean by that?

Currently, US consumers benefit from being the primary market of all sorts of goods. Market research is done to cater to our tastes, stuff comes in Imperial measurements, labelling is in English, etc. This first-class treatment won't last for long as Chinese manufacturers become their own companies rather than subsidiaries or suppliers of American companies.

[DAVOUT]

Originally posted by DanS


It's a biased graph because of the scale. I realize that it is Yahoo!'s graph, so I don't fault you for it. But I think it's worthwhile to note the fact that it's biased.

The information illustrated by the graph comes from a table with two columns : dates of the day since the beginning of the pegging at 8.28 (1996?) until july 21 2006 and the rate of the day, that is about 3500 lines.
The graph does nothing more than a point for each line.
A perfectly unbiased graph should have shown :
- on the y axis the starting point in 1996 whereas the changes appeared only in july 2005.
- But on the x axis there is a problem : what is the unbiased starting point? Zero is not the answer; even in the Congress nobody would expect the US$ value to decrease to zero; at least it could be one dollar, hardly unbiased anyway. If the minimum number of renminbi against one dollar was chosen at 4;97 (8.28 less 40% usual claim of the US), that would be clearly biased.
Now, depending the purpose (and readers) of the graph, we have to decide :
- the distance separating the units (days and cents) on both axis
- the part of the table included in the graph.
In the example, we was can assume that the graph was made for a wide public, not for scientists nor experts who would not need a graph for such trivial data (a small table is enough); therefore it must only illustrate a subject. In this respect, limiting the y axis to one year, showing two periods quite different, is reasonable, particularly if the subject was “Effects of the BPC policy on the rate of exchange”.
Then the scale of the x axis is empirically chosen in order to be in harmony with the y axis, that is that the picture looks like a rectangle not too wide compared to the height, or not too high compared with the width.
If the guy who made the graph we are talking about intended it to be biased, he missed the point because an unbiased guy would have made something not really different.

[RoboCon]

Hello there! I see you are discussing Economics. Perhaps I can be of assistance.

In short, there are some situations where you can defer foreign income off of the US return, in which case you will pay tax when you repatriate money into the US. There are other situations where abortion is no less an affront to humanity, including instances of incest, rape, and gay marriage. Bill Clinton will be in a jail cell this time next year, Colon. 9-11 changed everything. Nancy Pelosi and Tom Delay co-sponsored the bill, gerrymandering is all the rave in democratic caucuses.

[:) Smiley]

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by DAVOUT

A perfectly unbiased graph should have shown :
- on the y axis the starting point in 1996 whereas the changes appeared only in july 2005.
- But on the x axis there is a problem : what is the unbiased starting point? Zero is not the answer; even in the Congress nobody would expect the US$ value to decrease to zero; at least it could be one dollar, hardly unbiased anyway. If the minimum number of renminbi against one dollar was chosen at 4;97 (8.28 less 40% usual claim of the US), that would be clearly biased.
Now, depending the purpose (and readers) of the graph, we have to decide :
- the distance separating the units (days and cents) on both axis
- the part of the table included in the graph.
In the example, we was can assume that the graph was made for a wide public, not for scientists nor experts who would not need a graph for such trivial data (a small table is enough); therefore it must only illustrate a subject. In this respect, limiting the y axis to one year, showing two periods quite different, is reasonable, particularly if the subject was “Effects of the BPC policy on the rate of exchange”.
Then the scale of the x axis is empirically chosen in order to be in harmony with the y axis, that is that the picture looks like a rectangle not too wide compared to the height, or not too high compared with the width.
If the guy who made the graph we are talking about intended it to be biased, he missed the point because an unbiased guy would have made something not really different.

I got a bit confused with your post because I think you used opposite conventions from the rest of the world with regards to x axis (horizontal) and y axis (vertical).


Also the fact that nobody expects it to drop to zero has nothing to do.
The reason 0 is unbiaised as an origin is because exchange rates are measure in absolute, they cannot go below 0, but arbitrarly close.

Imagine I have two imaginary currencys you dont know about and I tell you currency x is worth 10 more y's than yesterday OMG !!

Well really I havn't told you anything. You don't know if that's a big change or not. It could have been worth 10 billion y's before and so this is really a trivial change.

Now if I tell you its doubled or increased 50% or whatever, that is a relative increase, this gives you a lot of information.

Putting the y-axis at 0 makes it easy to "see" even determine relative growth.

Any graph where an axis represents something that is measured in absolutes (not time or temperature for example) and the axis doesn't start at 0 is biaised.
they could at least use an axis break or something.


The fact that you mention that this is for a wide public is exactly the reason why it should be unbiaised.
Most people look at such a graph and go OMG look at that big drop, it's almost on the FLOOR!!! (but the floor was ARBITRARLY chosen).

[Colon™]

Originally posted by DAVOUT
If the guy who made the graph we are talking about intended it to be biased, he missed the point because an unbiased guy would have made something not really different.

Anyone can make such a graph at http://finance.yahoo.com/currency

Dan, it's hard for mee to see how picking an arbitrary value such as zero as reference would make things any less "biased", but I know you like to cling to silly notions every once in a while so I'll just leave it at that.

[DanS]

Zero is unbiased precisely because of the reasons Lul Thyme mentions.

It's almost as if y'all have never been taught how to read a chart critically (with all due respect otherwise). This is basic stuff.

[Colon™]

The practice is that there's never a reference value set to zero, presumably because people don't like a swathe of emptiness in their graphs. If Lully regularly gets to see such graphs, he should have realised that instead of lamenting manipulation.

[DarkCloud]

...out of curiosity- what's up with Robocon?

[Qilue]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
...out of curiosity- what's up with Robocon?

Having read most of his (can I assume this bot is a male?) posts, he has a limited vocabularity based on OT posts.

As the saying goes - 'monkey see, monkey do'.

[Kuciwalker]

It's not a bot. It's the DL of an old, now banned, poster.

[Qilue]

According to his profile, his real name is Steve Perry.