Just look for a 15% circle, put 2 of them into a 30% circle. You shouldn’t see any left-over pixels of the 30% circle peeking thru, but you do.

I’m not a math teacher, but i think this is an “arithmetic increase” mistakenly shown as a “geometric increase.” (Someone smarter set me straight here.)

Simply put: if Sam ate twice as many 10-inch apple pies as Sarah, you might show one pie icon next to Sarah’s name and 2 pie icons next to Sam’s name. Or if you wanted to use just a single but larger pie icon next to Sam’s name, it would be 2x larger in area/square-inches, NOT 2x larger in diameter as Mint shows.

Here’s the math: the 10-inch pie’s area = pi x radius-squared = 3.14 x 25 = 79 sq inches. So to show the consumption of two 10-inch pies, one could show 2 pie icons next to Sam’s name, or show ONE pie icon next to Sam’s name that has an area of 79 x 2 = 158 sq inches. Look at the ratio: 79 to 158, a 1 to 2 ratio.

Now look at Mint’s diagrams. They are doing the equivalent of representing Sarah’s consumption with a 10-inch pie next to Sam’s 20-inch pie. The area of Sarah’s consumption is 79 sq in, but Sam’s 314 square inches. That’s a 1 to 4 ratio. Sam ate twice as many pies, not four-times as many. But Mint’s diagram suggests Sam consumed FOUR-TIMES as many.

So when a country consumes 2x as many resources as another, Mint’s diagram suggests that it’s 4x as many instead, giving many unfounded fodder for those who poke at the US for consuming more than it’s “fair share.”

Having used Adobe Illustrator for a billion years, I can understand why this is a simple and common mistake by graphic designers not trained in info-graphics/statistics, but it’s also easily remedied by a wee bit of journalistic integrity, or a math teacher’s scolding.

S

Whilst I agree that levels of consumption and waste are outrageous in developed nations, at least the majority of that waste is collected and dealt with in a way that at least makes an effort manage the impact on the environment. I was in India in March and that is a nation with an exploding population and absolutely no intention of managing any of their waste, aside from dumping it in a waterway and hoping it will either sink or someone else will deal with it. The only bin I saw in a whole month of travel across 4 states was wastepaper sized and didnt even have a base to it, so the rubbish i put in it fell straight onto the ground. An old indian guy laughed at me for trying! The Indian people are forced to just live with their rubbish – there is zero attempt by any authority to deal with the situation. The developing world is a major part of the environmental crisis we are descending into, and unfortunately those countries are more concerned with developing their industry and securing their borders than with any sort of environmental conservation. We should be considering the frameworks that are being developed for the developed world and how they can contribute to improving the standard of life for developing nations in a more sustainable fashion than is currently occurring.

I love this series of graphics, but please use better reporting practices!

Your diagram makes the classic mistake of relating percentages to diameter.

I’m not trying to nitpick, this is really important, because your diagram is on digg already has a pretty large impact. And right now, its impact is not to clarify statistics, but to obscure them.

Take a look at the oil consumption picture. The USA is using 24%, that’s 8 times more than Germany. However, much more than 8 of the wee little circles you drew for Germany fit into the big USA circle. In terms of its area, the USA circle is 64 times larger.

The correct formula for the diameter of the circles, to get the area and the perception right, is:

Diameter = Diameter of 100% * sqrt(percentage/100)

If you want to represent 34% and your 100% circle has a diameter of 150 pixels, then 34% is best represented by a circle of 150*sqrt(0.34)=87.5 Pixels in diameter.