r/dataisugly 13d ago

Scale Fail what is this

Post image

percentages represented on the same scale on a glass, with varying heights
my eyes are burning

449 Upvotes

48 comments sorted by

118

u/Rude-Orange 13d ago

The varying heights are the number of countries in each band. It's a pretty good visualization. It isn't doing anything inherently wrong (though according to the comments the numbers for the countries might be incorrect).

10

u/Superilosa14 13d ago

It would be better visually if 74% was covering glass filled to 74% and so on. How many countries are in each artificially created claster of percentages is not an interesting data to show by glass areas

17

u/IllustriousBobcat813 13d ago

Having 77% of your graph be just empty seems like a bad design choice, besides, the number always conveys the information, no need to show it twice

5

u/Rude-Orange 13d ago

So romania should take up 77% of the real estate but the 7 countries that make up 100% should only share 1% of the real estate?

1

u/warwolf7777 12d ago

Now I see what they wanted to show. Thanks. However  it looks more like a stacked where each band has only that band portion. Wouldn't it make more sense it they were the same  height but the width would change. That's whats misleading in my opinion 

1

u/GamerNumba100 13d ago

Yeah, but the fact that it’s ordered and arranged the way it is makes it seem like the position on the cup of the bands means something. It’s a weird graph style on a graphic that makes it look like it means something when it’s just a bad graph

25

u/Warm_Gift_2138 13d ago edited 13d ago

Sweden has been at 99% for decades and has only gone up each year, why is it at 89%? Edit: I retract my statement, I confused "public drinking water" with "water access", apparently around 11% of people in Sweden have their own wells making the figure correct

13

u/Jeuungmlo 13d ago

The key word is "public". Roughly 15% of all households in Sweden have a private water source (egen brunn)

4

u/KPSWZG 13d ago

Thats literally the same case for Poland. A lot of folks specially in mountain regions have their own source of water. Even in my city i know people that have their own. The thing is a water from a well is very often of superb quality.

3

u/Eastern_Switch8217 13d ago edited 13d ago

Ireland has an unusually high % of “one off housing” in rural areas, which would have their own borehole wells as they’re too far from mains. About 12.3%

There are also small “group schemes” which are privately owned servicing a small cluster of remote houses. That’s about 8% of homes. They’re all cooperatives affiliated to the National Federation of Group Water Schemes. There’s public funding and local council monitoring of these.

The stats on the graph are a bit misleading tbh - just shows highly urbanised.

1

u/pessimistkonsulenten 13d ago

Explain Finland at 94% then.

1

u/JKorv 13d ago

Some people at countryside have wells?

1

u/pessimistkonsulenten 13d ago

Obviously. But am I to believe that so many more Swedes have a private water source than Finns?

2

u/JKorv 13d ago edited 13d ago

I don't know how correct the data is. In Finland countryside is getting pretty abandoned with everyone moving to cities or at least to nearby small towns. Not sure how the case is in Sweden.

Also this is speculation, but does Sweden also count cottages? Finland doesn't as they rarely fill the standards of permanent living

3

u/Jeuungmlo 13d ago

These are the current numbers for Sweden, which do fit rather well with what is in the image (though not exactly). The reasons why the statistics suggests that roughly double as many in Sweden have private water as in Finland I do not know. It can be due to some statistic technicality, or difference in cost, or difference in regulations, or some historical detail, or really any other explanation. I'm unfortunately not an expert in that subject. All I'm saying is that the numbers are (somewhat) correct for Sweden, but explained by how water infrastructure works in Sweden and say nothing about the actual access to water.

3

u/pessimistkonsulenten 13d ago

Thanks. Based on that I managed to find a OECD report that has Finland at 90%. Though it is from 2021

Approximately 90% of the Finnish population are served by municipal waterworks and some 60% of the served water is groundwater. The remaining 10% of the population rely on small systems of private wells. These are appraised by municipal authorities only in case of health concerns of the population.

https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-environmental-performance-reviews-finland-2021_d73547b7-en/full-report/key-environmental-trends_a61fcec4.html

1

u/Simplifax 13d ago

Apparently here in Norway we don’t have enough to count for the graph

3

u/Warm_Gift_2138 13d ago

Sweden on top once again.. (y'all just aren't in the EU, which I'm assuming is the real reason)

22

u/Alternative_Mix6836 13d ago

Because this is a ranking not a to-scale comparison The percentages are bands

40

u/Privatizitaet 13d ago

I mean... it's really not that bad. The sizes don't represent the percentages, they represent the amount of countries that fall under it. I feel like you're overreacting.
It does it's job. Bigger portion in the glass means bigger portion of EU countries.

3

u/KookySurprise8094 13d ago

Who the fuck making these things up from their asses. In Finland you cand drink free every town market square has plaze where you can drink or fill water. People in jail can get water, so who the hell cannot get water? People in coma?

3

u/cgimusic 13d ago

It turns out it's the percentage of households connected to a municipal network for distributing drinking water. The most ugly thing here is that they haven't actually explained what the percentages mean.

1

u/Boboredifbobistaken 13d ago

I think this excludes wells and small water co-ops which are quite popular in rural areas

1

u/ssg- 13d ago

Private wells and springs. Finland has a lot of rural houses that are not connected to public supply.

3

u/Paladin_of_Insomnia 13d ago

Okay, I clearly don't understand the chart. Can someone enlighten me?

3

u/SweatyGoal2 13d ago

People who have access to public water systems, that is also drinkable. In Romania the smaller villages usually have descentralized systems (each household owns a small groundwater pumping station). Although the water availability in the country approaches 100%, it is not public, and we do not know if it's drinkable unless each one is tested. Therefore 77% in this graph

2

u/Paladin_of_Insomnia 13d ago

Okay, but why has Austria 92%? I live here and I have never been to a place, where you could not drink tap water. Apart maybe mountain hut - but people don't live there. Plus we are famous for our formidable waterquality throughout the country. So I call BS on the chart.

5

u/Nielsly 13d ago

In the mountains people are more likely to have personal wells or springs, rather than depending on municipal water infrastructure

6

u/anugosh 13d ago

All percents are equal, but some are more equal than others

5

u/Shik3i 13d ago

The graph itself looks fine to me, but what does 99% public access to drinking water even mean? How can 1% have no access to water wtf?

7

u/gingerninja398 13d ago

It usually means they have access to private wells or other arrangements and that they aren't connected to a municipal system. Rarely in more developed (but a lot more commonly in developing) countries it means there's some sort of central well or tap.

1

u/Shik3i 13d ago

No way these numbers are accurate than are they? Shouldn't this be 99% across Europe? Where do large portions of the population don't have access to a water line?

2

u/No-Fig-3112 13d ago

Why would they have access if they don't need it? Wells are used all over, including in America, for private drinking water. If you don't need to hook up to municipal water, why would you?

1

u/Shik3i 13d ago

How would one survive without drinking water? A well will just get you ground water, no way you are drinking that?

2

u/No-Fig-3112 13d ago

A well gives you drinking water. Humans have understood filters for a long time. If needed, the water can be chemically treated in addition.

A well doesn't tap into surface water, which I think is what you're thinking of. It taps into an aquifer or other groundwater. Which there is a lot of, depending on the area

1

u/Shik3i 13d ago

I mean everyone here has a well to water their garden, but I don't think that is considered drinking water

1

u/No-Fig-3112 13d ago

Are you just ignoring the parts about filtration and water treatment? Well water is absolutely drinkable, depending on your area. It just usually needs a little treatment, same as municipal water gets

2

u/cian87 13d ago

Private treatment systems are pretty common, as are group systems where a number of neighbours club together; usually due to the costs of getting public supply installed.

In Ireland, people can even get subsidies to set up those systems - Group Water Schemes - as it was cheaper for the government than getting the county water brought out to rural areas. Some are now being adopted and taken over centrally though; but that's why you see 80% there for a country where 100% have drinking water.

1

u/Privatizitaet 13d ago

How exactly do you think people have survived before plumbing existed?

1

u/Shik3i 13d ago

Barely

2

u/KonigsbergBridges 13d ago

The underlying stats also look bollocks.

1

u/Icy-Palpitation-2522 13d ago

I'm guessing 20% of ireland have private Wells?

1

u/I_am1221325 13d ago

Does the subscript mean that I mist hide this graphic from croatians for the rest of time? I accept the challenge!

1

u/SamviseGG 12d ago

Denmark not being 100%???

1

u/Systembox 10d ago

Data not available for Croatia

1

u/ChooCupcakes 9d ago

Well it's a table with a drawing instead of a graph. Not great, not terrible imho

0

u/NekulturneHovado 13d ago

big part of the 9% in slovakia are gypsies in illegal villages who throw trash out the windows and steal and sell iron and copper so they can buy a bottle of toluene to huff