Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

BroadElderberry t1_j4e3fe5 wrote

Reply to comment by tfcallahan1 in How do people across the world spend their time and what does this tell us about living conditions? by kraken_enrager

You can go down that rabbit hole for years. Unemployment rates in each country will also skew numbers. So can social security/retirement qualifications. For an analysis like this, you have to pick a range, and you have to apply it equally against all test subjects (in this case, countries).

I'd guess they made their choice based on a calculated averages of starting/stopping work.

1

tfcallahan1 t1_j4fvdah wrote

Yeah. So a question is does this graph provide any useful information? If it were restricted to say persons employed full time between certain ages it would provide information for each country that can be more directly compared.

1

BroadElderberry t1_j4hnr86 wrote

I think it does. It gives average times spent on certain activities for people aged 15-64 across several countries. As long as you understand what each of the bolded phrases mean and the influence they have on the outcome, it's a very useful and interesting graph.

There's a reason statistics is an entire field. Making assumptions or expecting a graph to say something it isn't is super easy to do.

2