I have and continue to spend a fair amount of my time finding effective ways of demonstrating data visually. Over at Crooked Timber there is a post that tracks the President’s Approval ratings and it is quite dramatic. Perhaps unrepresentative given the war spike after 9/11 if one wants to quibble, but it certainly passes what I call the interocular test (Henry calls it the interocular trauma test). It is a good graph. Now notice what happens when angry little statboi enters into a comments discussion with people trained in data visualization techniques. My first comment took less time to compose than this post because the damn page in Cleveland is well worn. The moral of the story is asking questions is good. Challenging information isn’t bad. Pretending you know the F*$&##*& literature, linking to it, and directly contradicting the two biggest experts in the field when you are clueless just makes you look like an ass.
BTW, Henry is a PhD in Political Science and a quite gifted scholar so it isn’t like the result couldn’t be anticipated. And wait! I have another political science post for tomorrow! You can’t wait, I know.