There doesn't appear to be much motivation for using anything other than a linear regression on this, and the result would be a lot flatter than the trend line given.
A linear regression would be theoretically wonky, since the Y-axis is upper bounded at 100%. So, by the time the graph hits values like 80%, it should start to get "saturated" and flatten out. This fit, with A approximately 100 does a good job of that.
Clearly, the fit is bad near the origin (for small purchasing power), so maybe one can expect a modification at small values of x; I'm not sure if that that will correspond to small values of y.
Yep, that, and the regression seems to be forced through the origin, which is stupid. And the dependent variable is on the X-axis. All pretty weird choices.
Much of the variation in how people respond to "Humans evolved from earlier species" seems to be due to whether their particular culture/religion requires them to take a specific view on the subject [1]. If it does, people answer in line with their culture/religion, rather than science.
In effect, questionnaires like this end up studying what particular religions have to say on the matter, and it just happens that the US cultures/religions are more backwards (less accepting of science) than others.
The fit of A(1-B/x) through the scatterplot is kind of misleading too. Apart from Turkey and USA, the whole plot is more like 2 or 3 clusters, which are already highlighted, and the actual relationship with GDP per capita is much weaker than implied by the fit curve. Look at the actual points: the colours (country location) contain most of the information, and the fit curve doesn't add much information.
I'd like to see this done for ghosts, alien visitors, god, supernatural beings, general mysticism, luck, fate, reincarnation, karma, miracles, astrology, ESP, deja vu and so on.
The number of people that believe in ghosts is just as shocking to me as people that don't believe in evolution.
"A Harris poll from last year found that 42 percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts. The percentage is similar in the U.K., where 52 percent of respondents indicated that they believed in ghosts in a recent poll."
Ghosts are real and I can explain them completely rationally: The subconscious is trained to see patterns or anti-patterns that indicate danger. Thus the subconscious makes you "feel" thinks or see things that, historically in the evolutionary sense, were there.
Only our environment is generally a lot safer, so you sense these things when your subconscious senses risk, and alarms you, causing you to "See" the ghosts.
That's effectively as real as the color yellow, as far as you can individually sense.
Not sure if I believe this chart. For example, fewer people in eastern Europe believe in evolution than Western Europe? Eastern Europe has very low rates of religious belief - because of their connection with communism.
Several Eastern European countries have very strong orthodox churches. There is a large, general area there referred to as Europe's bible belt for that reason.
For example, Romania is an extremely religious country:
There is no explanation about which countries have been included and which have not. What is the criteria? Was there any at all? Or did the author just pick some countries to make the USA a more obvious outlier?
Interesting data, nonsense fit. If you do not have a theory wich predicts a relationship between data, stop for... sake to "fit a line". There is nothing to fit.
Honestly I'd like to see tighter clustering near the trend line before I'd say it's a trend. Unless the scaling was optimized so the country names could fit near the dot
Correlations is not Causation, otherwise you could make the argument that Somali Pirates are the cause of Global Warming.
The data here is poor in several ways- the selection is highly weighted towards european countries and excludes, for instance, Canada and Mexico and South America. Africa is right out and the only asian country is Japan. Further, GDP is not a measure of "Wealth" but the size of an economy (wealth is like savings, GDP is like gross revenue.)
Finally the worst thing about this is its sole purpose is to reinforce the anti-intellectual idea that liberals are superior to others... the great increase in pseudo science among liberals and liberal propaganda is very troubling, especially when combined with the liberal belief that they have a monopoly on science.
Yes, it's true that a religious person will say "well, I have faith" when backed into a corner.
However, it's not the case that liberals insisting that "Science" proves them correct because they read some propaganda on DailyKOS or TalkingPointsMemo is a superior position! Quite the contrary. And much worse they think it is superior, that "Science said it, I believe it, that settles it" and are often very smug about this.
This means when engaging in an actual debate with them, the will not respond to science, cannot bring science to bear (they will link to things that claim to be backed by science but cannot respond to scientific arguments to refute them)
Liberals have faith in talking points, and that's at best, no better than someone who has faith in their preacher.
But liberals are far more smug about it, and less likely to allow for areas of grey.
> The data here is poor in several ways- the selection is highly weighted towards european countries and excludes, for instance, Canada and Mexico and South America. Africa is right out and the only asian country is Japan. Further, GDP is not a measure of "Wealth" but the size of an economy (wealth is like savings, GDP is like gross revenue.)
Agreed with this. The selection of countries is limited, and is a result of the source article, which is itself an interesting read on the politicisation of science: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5788/765.full
I wrote a longer response to the rest of your comment, but on reflection I think I'd rather not to get into that here.
[+] [-] dantillberg|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssivark|10 years ago|reply
Clearly, the fit is bad near the origin (for small purchasing power), so maybe one can expect a modification at small values of x; I'm not sure if that that will correspond to small values of y.
[+] [-] stdbrouw|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conistonwater|10 years ago|reply
The fit of A(1-B/x) through the scatterplot is kind of misleading too. Apart from Turkey and USA, the whole plot is more like 2 or 3 clusters, which are already highlighted, and the actual relationship with GDP per capita is much weaker than implied by the fit curve. Look at the actual points: the colours (country location) contain most of the information, and the fit curve doesn't add much information.
[1] http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/
[+] [-] myth_buster|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
The number of people that believe in ghosts is just as shocking to me as people that don't believe in evolution.
"A Harris poll from last year found that 42 percent of Americans say they believe in ghosts. The percentage is similar in the U.K., where 52 percent of respondents indicated that they believed in ghosts in a recent poll."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/09/why-do-peo...
[+] [-] MCRed|10 years ago|reply
Only our environment is generally a lot safer, so you sense these things when your subconscious senses risk, and alarms you, causing you to "See" the ghosts.
That's effectively as real as the color yellow, as far as you can individually sense.
[+] [-] nostrademons|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesusland_map
[+] [-] codecamper|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adventured|10 years ago|reply
For example, Romania is an extremely religious country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Romania
[+] [-] lmm|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] donkeyd|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maged|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scriptedfate|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joosters|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrandoElFollito|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morenoh149|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomjakubowski|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MCRed|10 years ago|reply
The data here is poor in several ways- the selection is highly weighted towards european countries and excludes, for instance, Canada and Mexico and South America. Africa is right out and the only asian country is Japan. Further, GDP is not a measure of "Wealth" but the size of an economy (wealth is like savings, GDP is like gross revenue.)
Finally the worst thing about this is its sole purpose is to reinforce the anti-intellectual idea that liberals are superior to others... the great increase in pseudo science among liberals and liberal propaganda is very troubling, especially when combined with the liberal belief that they have a monopoly on science.
Yes, it's true that a religious person will say "well, I have faith" when backed into a corner.
However, it's not the case that liberals insisting that "Science" proves them correct because they read some propaganda on DailyKOS or TalkingPointsMemo is a superior position! Quite the contrary. And much worse they think it is superior, that "Science said it, I believe it, that settles it" and are often very smug about this.
This means when engaging in an actual debate with them, the will not respond to science, cannot bring science to bear (they will link to things that claim to be backed by science but cannot respond to scientific arguments to refute them)
Liberals have faith in talking points, and that's at best, no better than someone who has faith in their preacher.
But liberals are far more smug about it, and less likely to allow for areas of grey.
This is, of course my experience only.
[+] [-] Osmium|10 years ago|reply
Agreed with this. The selection of countries is limited, and is a result of the source article, which is itself an interesting read on the politicisation of science: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5788/765.full
I wrote a longer response to the rest of your comment, but on reflection I think I'd rather not to get into that here.
[+] [-] TazeTSchnitzel|10 years ago|reply