[wdmmg-dev] Technical problem at WDMMG

Thu Jun 16 10:33:25 UTC 2011

HI Graeme,

Thank you for your email, your attention to detail is much
appreciated.  These are definitely things that we need to look into -
we're a small team so we do need people to keep flagging things like
this up so that we can make the site better.

I am going to keep wdmmg-dev in the loop as that is where the
developers reside who can take a look at this. We will get to it as
soon as possible!

@ Team - please see Graeme's email below.

Thanks,

Lucy

On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 11:13 AM, Graeme Bell <graeme at graemebell.com> wrote:
> Hi Lucy,
> I've just notified Martin @kulella that those pages seem to be working now.
>
> I've always thought WDMMG is a really great resource - however I want to
> raise a couple of issues with you about the content of the 'regional' pages.
> Firstly the data you're using does seem to throw up some very odd anomalies,
> and perhaps someone needs to filter some of the data to ensure that you're
> not inadvertently comparing apples and pears.
>
> A good example is on this page:
> http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org/dashboard/#/year=2009&region1=Wales&spending=indexed&region2=Northern-Ireland&view=comparatron-a
>
> Given the ongoing security situation in Northern Ireland, I'm sure many
> people would be surprised to see that defence spending per capita in Wales
> is 7,766% higher than in NI. There is the same anomaly comparing NI with
> other regions. I can only presume that NI defence spending is accounted for
> from a central budget - in which case you should really remove these
> comparisons from the site, as they're meaningless. Incidentally, as you'll
> see, another side effect is that the proportional bar-chart format makes the
> representation of other deviations virtually invisible!
>
> I do think there's a slightly more general problem in these 'regional
> comparisons' in that some discrepancies between the devolved nations and
> English regions can only be explained by some budgets being exercised at a
> whole-of-England level.... which again means that comparisons are pretty
> meaningless and misleading.
>
> Finally I think there are a few glitches in your graphic representation in
> the 'Regional overview' area. Have a look at this page:
> http://wheredoesmymoneygo.org/dashboard/#/filter=10%2C04%2C06%2C08%2C01%2C03%2C05%2C02%2C09%2C07&year=2009&region=uk&spending=per_capita&view=regional-overviewTo
> take just one example, the red bar for 'Helping Others' shown forNorthern
> Ireland, Scotland and Wales. There's no doubt whatsoever that thebar under
> Scotland is taller than both the NI and Wales bars (put a ruler orthe edge
> of a piece of paper across the top of them!). Yet hover the mouseover the
> bars, and it immediately becomes clear that Scotland's per capitaspending in
> this area is actually the LOWEST of the 3!I found some other similar
> examples where the graph is simply not a truerepresentation of the
> data.Maybe someone needs to spend a bit of time going through these pages
> andchecking data against graphics!Keep up the good work
> otherwise.Regards,Graeme----- Original Message -----From: "Lucy Chambers"
> <lucy.chambers at okfn.org>To: "Graeme Bell" <graeme at graemebell.com>Cc:
> <wdmmg at okfn.org>; <wdmmg-dev at lists.okfn.org>Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2011
> 8:43 PMSubject: Re: Technical problem at WDMMG> Hi Graeme,>> I see what you
> mean.>> Cc'ing Wdmmg-dev for help on this one>>> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at
> 3:48 PM, Graeme Bell <graeme at graemebell.com>wrote:>> Hi,>> Neither the
> 'regional overview' not 'compare regions' pages are currently>> loading
> properly.>> Cheers,>> Graeme>>>> --> Lucy Chambers> Community Coordinator>
> Open Knowledge Foundation> http://okfn.org/> Skype: lucyfediachambers
>

-- 
Lucy Chambers
Community Coordinator
Open Knowledge Foundation
http://okfn.org/
Skype: lucyfediachambers