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DeltaMaster clicks!
June 2008
Trick of the month:
Absolute, relative and
weighted variance
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DeltaMaster clicks! 12/2008:
Small Multiples
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June 2008
Greetings, fellow data analysts!
Consumers who are conscious about their health or figure religiously check the nutrition labels to see how much fat is in certain food. In England, on the other hand, they simply use traffic-light colors to warn of excessive salt, fat and sugar. But who knows how they define "good" or "bad" when the numbers are missing? Germany’s regulations for cheese are even better. Manufacturers are required by law to display the fat content in dry weight on the packaging. This way, everyone can see that
Camembert and Pecorino both contain 48 % fat ... in dry weight, of course. The only problem is that dry weight is measured by extracting all water out of the cheese. While soft cheese contains a lot of water, hard cheese barely has any. As a result, hard cheese generally contains more fat than soft cheese. In other words, the argument for comparing percentages has more holes than Swiss cheese itself. The point of this story is to use percentages with caution. Don’t forget to look at the absolute numbers - or observe them both and weigh them alongside each other.
This way, you can make comparisons more easily and make your reports even stronger. We’ll show you how in this edition of clicks!
Best regards,
Your Bissantz & Company team
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