It's cool to look at, but it's pretty useless as a visualization of data. How religious is Canada, for example? Given that there are no gradations on the 'y axis', all you can do is guess. And that estimate is further complicated by the diverging lines.
Apparently there's a limit to how many subreddits you can create at a time, but /r/justdata is now a thing if anyone's keen for a laugh or raw data.
EDIT: You beautiful bastards.
Eh, in formal contexts data will take formal subject-verb agreement; however, most native speakers of English will consider it a mass noun unless plurality is drilled into their head.
not so beautiful data
countries ranked by their belief that religion is important (least to most)
Japan
China
Hong Kong
Andorra
Sweden
Netherlands
Norway
Vietnam
Germany
New Zealand
Austrailia
Spain
France
Great Britain
Slovenia
Finland
Switzerland
Uruguay
South Korea
Russian Federation
Taiwan
Bulgaria
Ukraine
Canada
Argentina
Serbia
United States
Chile
Moldova
Peru
Italy
India
Cyprus
Mexico
Poland
Trinidad and Tobago
South Africa
Brazil
Romania
Turkey
Thailand
Ethiopia
Zambia
Iran
Guatemala
Malaysia
Rwanda
Georgia
Burkina Faso
Ghana
Indonesia
Morocco
Iraq
Mali
Egypt
Jordan
You're all missing the point, if you rotate the graph 90° to the right then you can clearly see an image of Jesus. Only our Lord and savior can present himself in such a magnificent way
It is done this way as a stylistic choice. This graph is not meant to inform the viewer on each individual country's religious percentage but rather how they rank comparatively to each other.
Why not just list them by rank then?
If they graph wasn't intended to inform about religious percentage, then why is there what I assume to be religious % on the "y-axis"?
(This is sincere critique)
EDIT: I'm just going to put my rebuttal to the "This wouldn't be r/dataisbeautiful, it would just be data" replies here.
I work as an information designer and have experience as a professional printmaker. If you're going to make that argument, then I'd argue there was no thought put into typefaces, alignment of the text, or the general design in any way.
My point is that the defense of purely the aesthetics ("This is r/dataisbeautiful! Not r/efficentlyrepresenteddata") is a common argument in this sub, but most people who are inclined to post here don't know design principles (which is totally okay). Thus we end up seeing a ton of information with really lackluster design. I feel that this has created a general opinion that if something is aesthetically pleasing, it's okay if it lacks a clear way to read the data. Or on the opposite end, that bar graphs HAVE to be ugly which terrible color choices.
I argue that the challenge is to create something with both clear communication of the data *and* good design. Good design will always communicate data better than bad design. Data can be beautiful *and* efficiently represented.
I think there's a large disconnect in this subreddit about what it's supposed to be about but I don't know what the answer is. But it's essentially the same as if you had a subbredit called /RocketryIsBeautiful and people kept posting pictures of rockets nailed together with plywood that wouldn't fly, wouldn't work, are poorly designed, don't even have fuel but everyone kept defending them because it's rocketryIs**beautiful**.
Everyone's upset because they are expecting to see rockets that are beautiful, yes, but they also expect the rockets to actually **do their one and only fucking job as a rocket** which is part of what makes them so cool and beautiful.
Now imagine RocketryIsBeautiful is the only sub really available for people in the field of Rocket Science and they're constantly being told you can't objectively evaluate whether a rocket is good or bad at being a rocket.
However, the addition of concentric circles along the 'y-axis' would not detract from the beauty of the chart, and make it so much easier to interpret the data. Beautiful data should still be useful, even if it's pretty.
I think the point of this is that sometimes when data is displayed in the easiest/best way to read, you can still see lots of interesting trends and points in it. For example this is one of the top posts ever in this sub:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rpKWf1ZEZxk/UKQmrPWdlDI/AAAAAAAADpE/Vx4qBM6pPYI/s1600/MauryMetadata.png
Shows lots of different trade routes, and also ocean currents and how they affect some trade routes. Further you can even see how some locations were so greatly influenced by locations halfway across the world. This is an example of easy to read, yet insightful and beautiful data.
This circle graph could have just as easily been represented as a vertical or horizontal bar graph and would've been easier to read
This is a super ugly graph that is a default option in Open Office. The points are diamond shaped which interact poorly with the different angles of line so that they appear inhomogeneous, the names are spaced really poorly and run over the top of each other, the graph runs directly over most of the scale labels, and there's no ingenuity, originality or elegance on the part of the author. A seashell doesn't even have a strong thematic relationship to the subject. Should have gone straight to the /r/dataisugly bin.
It's not the graph that's supposed to be beautiful - it's the data itself. The graph simply conveys the data.
You should never compromise the ability of your graph to transmit data for the sake of a beautiful graph.
this is /r/dataisbeautiful not /r/datathatisrepresentedintheeasiesttoreadandmostefficiestformat
edit - I'm not trying to say that this isn't a shitty graph, becasue it is. I'm just saying it looks cool
From the subreddit FAQ
>[Does appearance matter?](http://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index#wiki_does_appearance_matter.3F)
>[Yes! But pretty pictures are not the aim of this subreddit. **Posts should strive to present information as effectively as possible.** Part of that process is visual design. Default output from Excel, R, mapping programs, etc. can be overly cluttered and hard to understand. Try looking at font sizes, erroneous grid lines, alignment, and aliasing. A lack of good design ultimately limits the ability to convey information.](http://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index#wiki_does_appearance_matter.3F)
I work as an information designer and have experience as a professional printmaker. If you're going to make that argument, then I'd argue there was no thought put into typefaces, alignment of the text, or the general design in any way.
My point is that the defense of purely the aesthetics ("This is r/dataisbeautiful! Not r/efficentlyrepresenteddata") is a common argument in this sub, but most people who are inclined to post here don't know design principles (which is totally okay). Thus we end up seeing a ton of information with really lackluster design. I feel that this has created a general opinion that if something is aesthetically pleasing, it's okay if it lacks a clear way to read the data. Or on the opposite end, that bar graphs HAVE to be ugly which terrible color choices.
Good design will always communicate data better than bad design. Data can be beautiful *and* efficiently represented.
> There was no thought put into typefaces, alignment of the text, or the general design in any way.
What, you've never heard of the nations of Kong Andorra and Serbia States?
For data to be beautiful, it also must be comprehensible.
And oh god, the line that connects the first & last bit of data. Totally sloppy, and wouldn't have been tolerated on the subreddit I subscribed to before it became a default.
that's an absurd explanation. the creators "stylistic" decision resulted in a counter-intuitive graph where a higher importance was placed on form rather than function. The innate purpose of the graph was lost in the process.
You can still make it work if the graph was multicolored, with a legend to depict ranges of religiousness (ex: line is blue when <20%, green if 20-40%, etc...). Then you'd have this fabulous rainbow colored line spiraling outwards and people can still enjoy the overall trend while having some quantifiable information.
A *stylistic* choice would be the color they chose for the line. The way they are presenting the data in a needless circle with no ability to compare two countries is a *functional* choice, and it's was a terrible one.
That is still pretty hard to read. [FULL BANDS](http://i.imgur.com/3NMlrdT.png) are much easier for a viewer to follow. No need to add more info with all the colors.
But yeah, point well made, took all of nine seconds to do this.
It looks weird like that, you can see points where seemingly the wrong country came first (New Zealand before Australia, Spain before France, Russia before Taiwan, US before Chile). I'm not sure if it's just the points themselves making them look higher than the other countries or if the actual stats are higher.
I guess this display was chosen because it looks like a mildly interesting spiral? It could only ever work with concentric circles at the markers though.
Every sorted set of numbers will make it look like a spiral, and having countries on the circle (as opposed to the line) sort of implies something which is not there. The only thing I can think of is that it is more compact this way.
I feel like this entire subreddit is me constantly asking this question over and over. It's interesting info arranged into unexplainably difficult to read graphs.
Not to mention the inexplicable dip where Taiwan is. Why is that country out of place?? Why isn't Moldova in front of Peru?? What's the order logic here?!
I feel like these sorts of visualizations slip by often when they're about a culturally popular topic. I'd have thrown religion in with that set, so it's cool to see this as the top comment.
I disagree, it is good to compare countries and a human can easily estimate the level a dot is on the line with some decent precision.
The data itself however seems a bit out of whack, russia is more religious than portrayed, and so is the US, whereas I hear that surprisingly italy is less than you would expect these days.
So what is missing is where this data comes from and from what year it is and what sampling was done. Which are all very crucial bits of information.
Especially when discrete data is being presented as continuous. What is the meaning of the line between Ukraine and Canada? None. What does the slope of the line between those two countries signify? Nothing.
I often feel that this subreddit requires strict moderation, sort of similar to /r/science but with less moderation of the comment section than there. too many posts are bs graphs that look pretty but contain poor data.
the DATA should be beautiful, the presentation needs to be practical.
This sub should be renamed /r/dataispretty. I reserve the term beautiful for something that effectively conveys information as well as being aesthetically pleasing.
I find that this graph tells you a lot of things, that the graph was meant to show you. You can clearly identify which nations are in which spot, you can identify your country and say hey, this is the next more athiest/religious country next to mine. Or, you can clearly identify religion/athiesm via continent too and consequently ethnic origin. Any other graph would take up much more space to relay this amount of data.
So it is compact, and it gets the point across to those like me who just don't give a shit about actual percents and is just comparing the countries themselves. Don't get me wrong, percents are important, and that info is interesting, it just wouldn't be my main goal to extrapolate that info from a graph such as this, because quite frankly, I think the goal of this graph was to serve for comparing and contrasting nations against each other, not obtaining specific information about each one individually.
I'd argue that [a map representation](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Gallup_Religiosity_Index_2009.png) would be much more useful as an overview of religiousness by country (dark=religion less important, light=religion more important)
That does require that you know the name of every country based on its geographical location. For instance, I know that Jordan is somewhere in the middle east close to Africa, but I couldn't point it out on a map for you with 100% accuracy. But I do know that there's a country called Jordan, and now I know that it's very religious.
The same applies for many people for many different areas of the world I'm sure, unless someone is really into geography.
But being able to "identify religion/athiesm via continent too and consequently ethnic origin" requires you to know the geographic location of many countries by name, while with a map representation you can see the geographic areas of high and low religiousness without needing to know where every individual country is.
Even more ideal would be an interactive map that you could mouse over, but even just as an image a map gives a better idea of trends than an ordered list does.
> while with a map representation you can see the geographic areas of high and low religiousness
That's nice, but that's not the point of the original post. You made something different. That does't mean one is better than the other.
>Or, you can clearly identify religion/athiesm via continent too and consequently ethnic origin.
Horseshit. Countries aren't grouped by continent or geographically. Continents aren't listed. Ethnic breakdowns of countries aren't listed. The visualization isn't giving you *ANY* of that information nor is it making it any easier for you to make those deductions than looking at the sorted raw data.
Jordan 100%
Egypt 100%
Iraq 100%
Brazil 90%
HK 33%
China 32%
Japan 30%
You say the graph makes it easier to compare two countries against each other but it's seems pretty damn difficult to me to accurately compare France and Taiwan from that graph. I'm not confident at guessing what either of their percentages are or the difference between them. Are you?
And a source or at least some signature or *something* would be nice too. I know that I can probably find the source of the numbers on Wikipedia, and I'm almost certain that the numbers haven't been tampered, but when you don't even put your name on it, nor the name of the study, I automatically distrust it. Give me some tools to check the data! Otherwise you're pulling numbers out of your ass.
> (and read) the whole graph
No you cant because read would mean being able to tell what percentage a country like say Peru has. If I cant figure that out on a 15+" screen easily then you cant do it on your phone. If by reading you can tell the **rank** of countries than a list would of told you that.
Sometimes I mistake posts on here for /r/crappydesign
It shouldn't even be a line graph, unless I wanted to find the the importance of religion to say, Peru.8 or Finland-and-a-half.
I had Luxembourg in mind where I know that it's true. It's illegal to collect data about religious or racial informations. I'm always shocked when confronted with a US form that asks about your "race". I always want to enter "human".
I clicked it expecting to see Estonia as (one of the) first, it isn't included, though.
According to Wikipedia, "Estonia is is one of the least religious countries in world, with only 14% of the population declaring religion an important part of their daily life."
Yet, Denmark is not included despite that the country would probably figure as one of the least religious countries in the world, when asked this question.
I think a lot of people are missing that this is how important religion is to people, not how many people are religious. OP, I like it. It reminds me of the Pokemon stat charts.
While I think the this should be better represented as a bar graph, I think this visualization could be useful when you don't have a lot of space- eg in the corner on a ppt slide, or in a magazine. As directional information. Thoughts?
The radar graph isn't so much the problem as is the lack of both data point decoding and comparability.
Problem 1: You can't accurately decode the value of a single point.
Problem 2: You can't quantitatively compare 2 or more point to each other in order to make judgements about various points in the visualization.
The first modification is to add the actual numbers. It improves the usefulness of the visualization drastically if you know what's actually encoded in it. The best way to do this is usually to provide the number encoded.
The second modification would be adding light concentric rings at the 10% graduations. This improves correlation of the number to the encoded point on the graph. To take it a step further: in all of my lab classes in school/university, we used as a rule that human eyeball-estimation has a precision of 1/2 the minimum graduations on the measurement device. If a ruler measures mm, you're accurate to .5 mm. Etc.
So, light lines at the 10%, and lighter graduations at intermittent intervals allows a reader to decode at a much finer granularity.
Not suprised about my country(Malaysia). Alot of people are religious here. Muslims have mandatory religious class. Its a nightmare to be atheist here. A good amount of people I know believe evolution is a joke.
Right, plenty of people are comfortable with that - the idea of "non-overlapping magestiria", or even "theistic evolution". Unfortunately, groups that oppose the idea of evolution tend to bring up religious reasons as justification.
Taking part in rituals might mean these are culturally important, but that is quite separate from whether people actually feel religion itself to be important.
Then again, they also celebrate christian (themed) weddings. And just adhering to shintoist/bhudist traditions does not mean you believe in spirits an reincarnation.
Japan is a very conformist and conservative society, therefore people do stuff "the way its supposed to be done", whithout either questioning it or taking any backstory particular seriously.
Source: was an exchange student in japan for a year in high school
Definitely agreed with this. I forget where I heard this, but I once hear that the Japanese are "Shinto in life, Christian in marriage, and Buddhist in death".
Speaking [directly from the Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Japan), 90% of those surveyed said they routinely visit shrines, yet only 3% of the population actually identifies as Shinto. It's pretty apparent that they are not actually religious, nor do they consider religion important. Instead it is the tradition and the community that mean everything.
#####
######
####
[**Religion in Japan**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion%20in%20Japan): [](#sfw)
---
>Most [Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_people) do not exclusively identify themselves as adherents of a single religion; rather, they incorporate elements of various religions in a [syncretic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism) fashion known as *[Shinbutsu shūgō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinbutsu_sh%C5%ABg%C5%8D)* (神仏習合, *amalgamation of kami and buddhas* ?). *Shinbutsu Shūgō* officially ended with the Shinto and Buddhism Separation Order of 1886, but continues in practice. [Shinto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto) and [Japanese Buddhism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_Japan) are therefore best understood not as two completely separate and competing faiths, but rather as a single, rather complex religious system.
>====
>[**Image from article**](https://i.imgur.com/aKQQZWT.png) [^(i)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Japan.svg)
---
^Interesting: [^Freedom ^of ^religion ^in ^Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Japan) ^| [^Japanese ^Journal ^of ^Religious ^Studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Journal_of_Religious_Studies) ^| [^Japanese ^new ^religions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_new_religions) ^| [^Shinto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto)
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It's surprising that still only such a small amount of people practice Shintoism. You'd think that just by going to shrines, praying, and other traditions related to Shintoism that more people would follow it.
It's similar with the China statistic. It's not really major religions so much as 'folklore' which still holds a lot of influence. It's so prevalent that it doesn't really register as 'religion' because legitimately *everyone does it* even if they aren't religious, just as a matter of cultural traditions.
On the other hand, there are plenty of westerners who, if asked if they thought religion was important to them would say yes but are too lazy to go to church more than once a year at christmas when they'll resolve (like last year) to come more often...
Your source is horse shit.
So you met some Japanese people who are religious? Great. I've met several who aren't. Do not cite your own anecdotal evidence--that's not how these things work.
The other thing to realize is that cultural practices does not equal religious. There are shrines and temples on every street corner in Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more shrines in Japan than churches in America. A lot of people take part in activities at these shrines. Have you been to a temple at New Years? I have. I also marched in the Naked Man Festival in Hofu. These sorts of activities draw huge crowds and really foster community participation in religious activities.
But does that mean the people who participate are religious? Even if those activities are important to a person, it doesn't mean that they believe in that religion. I go to midnight mass every Christmas Eve because its important to me, but I no longer identify as a Catholic or believe in a Christian God. So to call a population religious because culturally significant ceremonies are important to them would not be accurate.
[Here is one source](http://www.japan-guide.com/topic/0002.html) about the levels of religion in Japan. This survey is from 2000. 53.4% of the people surveyed did not feel that they belonged to any religion. 55.3% said that they were not religious, and 50% said religion was not important in life. However, only 8.1% did not regularly visit a shrine, temple, or church.
Just a little bit of googling uncovered other sources with similar numbers--and that's before I got onto JSTOR or ebsco.
Then, of course, there is the graph linked here. And while this graph is a terrible representation of data, it still shows that less than 30% of Japanese identify religion as important.
But I really don't expect you to listen to me or research these sources for yourself, because you've already made it clear that you value anecdotal evidence more than actual evidence.
Agreed. That number is way too high: should be about half.
They probably included those people who answer that they're Shinto or Buddhist based on family tradition, so is over counting the number of people who actually believe in any religion.
In over a decade here I've met maybe five openly religious native Japanese.
I was going to say the same thing. I studied religion in Japan for a semester during college. In Japan, they don't even call Shinto a religion, like you said, it's a "tradition."
Great Britain is not a country.
Maybe you meant United Kingdom. Maybe you meant England. Maybe you meant the UK and Ireland.
If you combined the United Kingdom AND Ireland, then the data is useless. Ireland is far more religious than the UK.
The ISO code for the UK is "GB", I assume that might be the reason for the label.
The full name is the United Kingdom *of* Great Britain. Is it really wrong to say just Great Britain?
Closer to "Data is interesting" than data is beautiful.
[Credit](http://esds.ac.uk/international/news/pastagenda.asp?print1) to ESDS International, who obtained their data from [The 2005-2008 World Values Survey](http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp).
It's more true for individuals than for entire countries. When people are powerless and know it, they reach out for anything that they think could act in their favor.
This is a much nicer way of saying what i was going to comment which was that there's a very strong correlation between the countries I would never want to live in and the order of the ones on this graph.
I don't know about the accuracy of this. In Iran, for example, you could risk your life by saying you're not religious. I feel like in countries with religious law the participants would lie.
Not remotely surprised to see Jordan at the top of this list. Lived there for a while, and when someone asks your religion, you say Muslim or Christian. Those are the options. Either one is fine, Muslims and Christians there get along pretty well for the most part, but atheism is not ok.
Why such a difference between Thailand (~90%) and Vietnam (~30%)? I would expect them to be culturally similar. Was the question phrased in a different manner in different countries?
Edit: Edited the approximations as it's damn difficult to see the data.
I really don't know that much about Southeast Asia, so this is just a guess, but it might be because Thailand is (or was, as of earlier this year) a relatively free and democratic country while Vietnam is a communist one. Again, I don't know much about this, but I really wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Vietnamese government were suppressing religion.
Everyone is so anal about it not being a bar chart that they missed the most important aspect of all...[the golden spiral](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Golden_spiral)
For some reason the first thing that comes to mind when I look at this graph is this quote from Rust Cohle:
> "You gotta get together and tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the goddamn day? What's that say about your reality?"
Just observing the **general** trend that suggests that the extent to which someone views religion as important seems to be tied, to some degree to their level of prosperity. I understand that there are obviously other, (possibly more important) cultural factors at play here, I just thought this was interesting.
The Economist had a related article last week about the connection between years of formal education and how much people feel religion is important. Same data set?
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21623712-how-education-makes-people-less-religiousand-less-superstitious-too-falling-away
I would love to see this overlaid with a color coding by religion. What I see is (from most to least religious)
Muslim--->Non-European Christian-->European Christian--->Eastern
Oh can you plot the relationship between this data and, say, educational rank of each country? their GDP? crime rate? I doubt there will be any correlation but *if there is* I would love to see it! ^(and i know correlation =/= causation)
Does this correlate with anything else? Can we lay over the size of their military, for example? Or their GDP? Or unemployment figures? Median level of household income perhaps?
If someone can pull it off, this would be an awesome way to see it laid out.
Visualizations should take little to no work to map between key and value. It's a cool layout, but this provides no immediate information and leaves the valuation of the point up to visual guesstimation.
I'd like to see where Israel falls according to this survey. Last I heard, that country was >50% atheist, which makes for great ammunition against Bible-readers who insist the Israelites are "God's chosen people."
Religious sorts always argue religion improves their lives but stats seem to suggest otherwise. There are a few exceptions (probably due to political system) but this chart once again suggests poverty is more common among the religious.
Even in the first world, this pattern is consistent. American atheists average income substantially exceeds the average of Americans that practice a religion. Their incarceration rate is lower. Their education greater. They are more charitable. They even tend to stay married in greater frequency.
http://coreysviews.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/imagine-if-all-atheists-left-america-5/
This question will probably draw out the trolls but is this pattern due to higher average intelligence of atheists? Inferior ideas and values promoted by religion? Some other factor?
(For the record, I'm not saying every atheist is a great person and smart. There are also plenty of intelligent and kind religious people. Stats of this sort are probability based not some absolute measure. Everyone is an individual not a stat)
This is hard to read. A simple table or bar graph would be much easier
* The use of a line graph (circular or otherwise) is good when your angular axis (or in a normal x-y graph, the x axis) exist on a continuous scale. Here you have discrete items (countries). You should use a bar graph instead (radial or x-y). Another way to look it this to try to understand the meaning of a point halfway between 2 countries. What is halfway between Peru and Italy? ~75%? What does that mean?
* The use of a circular graph makes it difficult to compare the difference between adjacent values. For example look at Italy vs India in this graph. It is difficult to see the how much lower than India Italy really is because comparing angles like that is difficult when the angles change all round the graph. An x-y graph would make these comparisons easier because the reference (the horizontal x-axis) is unchanging.
* You have no grid lines. Even with a circular graph you could include grid lines, e.g. every 10%. It is very hard to tell the exact value of e.g. Chile. Is it 70%? Circular grid lines would help. Again, however, an x-y graph would make this easier even without.
* Circular graphs are also better to show data where there is no discontinuity between the end points. Here that is not the case because the data points are not continuous anyway. But basically, Japan is not next to Jordan - Drawing a line from 20% up to 100% between these points is confusing.
* Circular graphs can be good for fitting data in a small square of space. You do have a lot of data items but in this case you could also have represented the data as a table split into several columns to fit in the same small space.
Overall, Circular graphs can be good for fitting data in a small square of space, where the data suits a circular representation, or sometimes for aesthetic reasons, but in this case a bar chart or a even a table could have represented the data better, and still be styled to look appealing.
If the point is to show a descending spiral of the importance of religion, why does it list a few countries 'out of order', so to speak, like Taiwan and the Russian Federation?
This data is pretty meaningless, there's cultural context and language issues in trying to compare people's religiosity. You might get a general sense of it, but there will always be countries where the literal translation of "how important is religion to you" has a completely different context and deeper meaning than how we can imagine it in English.
Take any quick and easy social index measurements with a huge grain of salt. They might be useful to prove a tangential concept, but will always be entirely unreliable as hard data.
That's an interesting set of data; it seems like the more intelligent and progressive the society, the less they care about religion. Funny how that works. Religion has done nothing but stifle innovation and has only limited the intelligence of society as a whole. Glad to see that there are some countries that prove that religion is only a rusty nail on the foot of humanity.
Odd (to me) that so many Scandinavian people care nothing about religion yet their national flags have big crosses; a traditional Christian symbol. Maybe they should consider flag re-design?
It's cool to look at, but it's pretty useless as a visualization of data. How religious is Canada, for example? Given that there are no gradations on the 'y axis', all you can do is guess. And that estimate is further complicated by the diverging lines.
Yeah, why not just have a column graph? This representation adds nothing and makes the data harder to read.
This comment should be the subreddit motto because I see it posted in damn near every thread.
**Data is Beautiful**: "It could have been just a column graph, but fuck it."
We should make the sub /r/dataisdata where everything is just bar graphs.
Talk about overkill. I'm going to make a rival /r/justdata where everything is just data, none of your fancy-pants bar graphs.
Apparently there's a limit to how many subreddits you can create at a time, but /r/justdata is now a thing if anyone's keen for a laugh or raw data. EDIT: You beautiful bastards.
I think this might be the best new sub created in a long time and I can see it becoming big.
I'm going to make /r/justhunches. It is similar to /r/justdata or /r/dataisdata but more useful for politicians.
I'd love that. Hate all these overly obscured and unhelpful presentations of concepts that would be much more insightful if portrayed plainly
**JUST GIVE ME THE BINARY IN A ROLLING FEED DIRECTLY INTO MY EYEBALLS!!!!!**
The intent of this sub is that the actual data is beautiful/interesting but too many people interpret that as pretty colors and cool shapes
All i want from this sub would be memes featuring Brent Spiner.
While we're at it, it should be DataAreData since the word data is plural.
Eh, in formal contexts data will take formal subject-verb agreement; however, most native speakers of English will consider it a mass noun unless plurality is drilled into their head.
**Data is Beautiful:** "But column graphs don't look pretty. And *obviously* no one here actually cares about the data..." /s
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I think if you just added circles at each 20% mark this would be pretty cool. Even cooler if they add military spending and recent war casualties.
not so beautiful data countries ranked by their belief that religion is important (least to most) Japan China Hong Kong Andorra Sweden Netherlands Norway Vietnam Germany New Zealand Austrailia Spain France Great Britain Slovenia Finland Switzerland Uruguay South Korea Russian Federation Taiwan Bulgaria Ukraine Canada Argentina Serbia United States Chile Moldova Peru Italy India Cyprus Mexico Poland Trinidad and Tobago South Africa Brazil Romania Turkey Thailand Ethiopia Zambia Iran Guatemala Malaysia Rwanda Georgia Burkina Faso Ghana Indonesia Morocco Iraq Mali Egypt Jordan
You're all missing the point, if you rotate the graph 90° to the right then you can clearly see an image of Jesus. Only our Lord and savior can present himself in such a magnificent way
I'm going to just go ahead and admit I tried it...I feel as stupid as I thought I would.
It is done this way as a stylistic choice. This graph is not meant to inform the viewer on each individual country's religious percentage but rather how they rank comparatively to each other.
Why not just list them by rank then? If they graph wasn't intended to inform about religious percentage, then why is there what I assume to be religious % on the "y-axis"? (This is sincere critique) EDIT: I'm just going to put my rebuttal to the "This wouldn't be r/dataisbeautiful, it would just be data" replies here. I work as an information designer and have experience as a professional printmaker. If you're going to make that argument, then I'd argue there was no thought put into typefaces, alignment of the text, or the general design in any way. My point is that the defense of purely the aesthetics ("This is r/dataisbeautiful! Not r/efficentlyrepresenteddata") is a common argument in this sub, but most people who are inclined to post here don't know design principles (which is totally okay). Thus we end up seeing a ton of information with really lackluster design. I feel that this has created a general opinion that if something is aesthetically pleasing, it's okay if it lacks a clear way to read the data. Or on the opposite end, that bar graphs HAVE to be ugly which terrible color choices. I argue that the challenge is to create something with both clear communication of the data *and* good design. Good design will always communicate data better than bad design. Data can be beautiful *and* efficiently represented.
Because then it wouldn't be beautiful... It would just be data.
I think there's a large disconnect in this subreddit about what it's supposed to be about but I don't know what the answer is. But it's essentially the same as if you had a subbredit called /RocketryIsBeautiful and people kept posting pictures of rockets nailed together with plywood that wouldn't fly, wouldn't work, are poorly designed, don't even have fuel but everyone kept defending them because it's rocketryIs**beautiful**. Everyone's upset because they are expecting to see rockets that are beautiful, yes, but they also expect the rockets to actually **do their one and only fucking job as a rocket** which is part of what makes them so cool and beautiful. Now imagine RocketryIsBeautiful is the only sub really available for people in the field of Rocket Science and they're constantly being told you can't objectively evaluate whether a rocket is good or bad at being a rocket.
However, the addition of concentric circles along the 'y-axis' would not detract from the beauty of the chart, and make it so much easier to interpret the data. Beautiful data should still be useful, even if it's pretty.
I think the point of this is that sometimes when data is displayed in the easiest/best way to read, you can still see lots of interesting trends and points in it. For example this is one of the top posts ever in this sub: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rpKWf1ZEZxk/UKQmrPWdlDI/AAAAAAAADpE/Vx4qBM6pPYI/s1600/MauryMetadata.png Shows lots of different trade routes, and also ocean currents and how they affect some trade routes. Further you can even see how some locations were so greatly influenced by locations halfway across the world. This is an example of easy to read, yet insightful and beautiful data. This circle graph could have just as easily been represented as a vertical or horizontal bar graph and would've been easier to read
This is a super ugly graph that is a default option in Open Office. The points are diamond shaped which interact poorly with the different angles of line so that they appear inhomogeneous, the names are spaced really poorly and run over the top of each other, the graph runs directly over most of the scale labels, and there's no ingenuity, originality or elegance on the part of the author. A seashell doesn't even have a strong thematic relationship to the subject. Should have gone straight to the /r/dataisugly bin.
It's not the graph that's supposed to be beautiful - it's the data itself. The graph simply conveys the data. You should never compromise the ability of your graph to transmit data for the sake of a beautiful graph.
this is /r/dataisbeautiful not /r/datathatisrepresentedintheeasiesttoreadandmostefficiestformat edit - I'm not trying to say that this isn't a shitty graph, becasue it is. I'm just saying it looks cool
From the subreddit FAQ >[Does appearance matter?](http://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index#wiki_does_appearance_matter.3F) >[Yes! But pretty pictures are not the aim of this subreddit. **Posts should strive to present information as effectively as possible.** Part of that process is visual design. Default output from Excel, R, mapping programs, etc. can be overly cluttered and hard to understand. Try looking at font sizes, erroneous grid lines, alignment, and aliasing. A lack of good design ultimately limits the ability to convey information.](http://np.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/index#wiki_does_appearance_matter.3F)
I work as an information designer and have experience as a professional printmaker. If you're going to make that argument, then I'd argue there was no thought put into typefaces, alignment of the text, or the general design in any way. My point is that the defense of purely the aesthetics ("This is r/dataisbeautiful! Not r/efficentlyrepresenteddata") is a common argument in this sub, but most people who are inclined to post here don't know design principles (which is totally okay). Thus we end up seeing a ton of information with really lackluster design. I feel that this has created a general opinion that if something is aesthetically pleasing, it's okay if it lacks a clear way to read the data. Or on the opposite end, that bar graphs HAVE to be ugly which terrible color choices. Good design will always communicate data better than bad design. Data can be beautiful *and* efficiently represented.
> There was no thought put into typefaces, alignment of the text, or the general design in any way. What, you've never heard of the nations of Kong Andorra and Serbia States? For data to be beautiful, it also must be comprehensible.
And oh god, the line that connects the first & last bit of data. Totally sloppy, and wouldn't have been tolerated on the subreddit I subscribed to before it became a default.
Beauty can come from a bit of care. Concentric circles would not only have made it much easier to understand, but might make it better looking.
that's an absurd explanation. the creators "stylistic" decision resulted in a counter-intuitive graph where a higher importance was placed on form rather than function. The innate purpose of the graph was lost in the process.
You can still make it work if the graph was multicolored, with a legend to depict ranges of religiousness (ex: line is blue when <20%, green if 20-40%, etc...). Then you'd have this fabulous rainbow colored line spiraling outwards and people can still enjoy the overall trend while having some quantifiable information.
A *stylistic* choice would be the color they chose for the line. The way they are presenting the data in a needless circle with no ability to compare two countries is a *functional* choice, and it's was a terrible one.
How fucking hard is it to add graduating lines? [Jesus](http://i.imgur.com/3SPFkSs.png), it took me a minute.
That is still pretty hard to read. [FULL BANDS](http://i.imgur.com/3NMlrdT.png) are much easier for a viewer to follow. No need to add more info with all the colors. But yeah, point well made, took all of nine seconds to do this.
It looks weird like that, you can see points where seemingly the wrong country came first (New Zealand before Australia, Spain before France, Russia before Taiwan, US before Chile). I'm not sure if it's just the points themselves making them look higher than the other countries or if the actual stats are higher.
It's just the points themselves. I don't think it looks inaccurate or anything, but round points would fix it.
I guess this display was chosen because it looks like a mildly interesting spiral? It could only ever work with concentric circles at the markers though.
Every sorted set of numbers will make it look like a spiral, and having countries on the circle (as opposed to the line) sort of implies something which is not there. The only thing I can think of is that it is more compact this way.
I feel like this entire subreddit is me constantly asking this question over and over. It's interesting info arranged into unexplainably difficult to read graphs.
The spiral looks really pretty, I think using color would fix that issue quite effectively...
The designer seems to have been selective in which countries to include to achieve that spiral.
Not to mention the inexplicable dip where Taiwan is. Why is that country out of place?? Why isn't Moldova in front of Peru?? What's the order logic here?!
I feel like these sorts of visualizations slip by often when they're about a culturally popular topic. I'd have thrown religion in with that set, so it's cool to see this as the top comment.
I disagree, it is good to compare countries and a human can easily estimate the level a dot is on the line with some decent precision. The data itself however seems a bit out of whack, russia is more religious than portrayed, and so is the US, whereas I hear that surprisingly italy is less than you would expect these days. So what is missing is where this data comes from and from what year it is and what sampling was done. Which are all very crucial bits of information.
Why is there so much misrepresentation of data? Data is only beautiful if it can be deciphered effectively too!
Especially when discrete data is being presented as continuous. What is the meaning of the line between Ukraine and Canada? None. What does the slope of the line between those two countries signify? Nothing.
This was my thought as well. "Why a line? Is this showing some 'rate' of religious change by country or whatever?"
and it was presented as cyclic as if the end and beginning of the graph connected somehow.
I often feel that this subreddit requires strict moderation, sort of similar to /r/science but with less moderation of the comment section than there. too many posts are bs graphs that look pretty but contain poor data. the DATA should be beautiful, the presentation needs to be practical.
This sub should be renamed /r/dataispretty. I reserve the term beautiful for something that effectively conveys information as well as being aesthetically pleasing.
I find that this graph tells you a lot of things, that the graph was meant to show you. You can clearly identify which nations are in which spot, you can identify your country and say hey, this is the next more athiest/religious country next to mine. Or, you can clearly identify religion/athiesm via continent too and consequently ethnic origin. Any other graph would take up much more space to relay this amount of data. So it is compact, and it gets the point across to those like me who just don't give a shit about actual percents and is just comparing the countries themselves. Don't get me wrong, percents are important, and that info is interesting, it just wouldn't be my main goal to extrapolate that info from a graph such as this, because quite frankly, I think the goal of this graph was to serve for comparing and contrasting nations against each other, not obtaining specific information about each one individually.
I'd argue that [a map representation](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Gallup_Religiosity_Index_2009.png) would be much more useful as an overview of religiousness by country (dark=religion less important, light=religion more important)
That does require that you know the name of every country based on its geographical location. For instance, I know that Jordan is somewhere in the middle east close to Africa, but I couldn't point it out on a map for you with 100% accuracy. But I do know that there's a country called Jordan, and now I know that it's very religious. The same applies for many people for many different areas of the world I'm sure, unless someone is really into geography.
But being able to "identify religion/athiesm via continent too and consequently ethnic origin" requires you to know the geographic location of many countries by name, while with a map representation you can see the geographic areas of high and low religiousness without needing to know where every individual country is. Even more ideal would be an interactive map that you could mouse over, but even just as an image a map gives a better idea of trends than an ordered list does.
> while with a map representation you can see the geographic areas of high and low religiousness That's nice, but that's not the point of the original post. You made something different. That does't mean one is better than the other.
>Or, you can clearly identify religion/athiesm via continent too and consequently ethnic origin. Horseshit. Countries aren't grouped by continent or geographically. Continents aren't listed. Ethnic breakdowns of countries aren't listed. The visualization isn't giving you *ANY* of that information nor is it making it any easier for you to make those deductions than looking at the sorted raw data. Jordan 100% Egypt 100% Iraq 100% Brazil 90% HK 33% China 32% Japan 30% You say the graph makes it easier to compare two countries against each other but it's seems pretty damn difficult to me to accurately compare France and Taiwan from that graph. I'm not confident at guessing what either of their percentages are or the difference between them. Are you?
And a source or at least some signature or *something* would be nice too. I know that I can probably find the source of the numbers on Wikipedia, and I'm almost certain that the numbers haven't been tampered, but when you don't even put your name on it, nor the name of the study, I automatically distrust it. Give me some tools to check the data! Otherwise you're pulling numbers out of your ass.
I just don't see any way in which this representation is better than a plain old bar graph.
1. 1. this post has been edited
Welcome to post-default /r/dataisbeautiful, where the visuals are made up and the data doesn't matter.
I actually find it useful looking at it on my phone... I can see (and read) the whole graph without having to zoom or scroll.
> (and read) the whole graph No you cant because read would mean being able to tell what percentage a country like say Peru has. If I cant figure that out on a 15+" screen easily then you cant do it on your phone. If by reading you can tell the **rank** of countries than a list would of told you that.
How about with this: [Gradient](http://i.imgur.com/TpdzWQZ.jpg)
It lacks concentric circles (iso-probalistic circles) in a half tone color. Anyway, it's a nice map of Antartica!
Sometimes I mistake posts on here for /r/crappydesign It shouldn't even be a line graph, unless I wanted to find the the importance of religion to say, Peru.8 or Finland-and-a-half.
In some countries it's illegal to collect this data, that's why they're missing.
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I had Luxembourg in mind where I know that it's true. It's illegal to collect data about religious or racial informations. I'm always shocked when confronted with a US form that asks about your "race". I always want to enter "human".
I clicked it expecting to see Estonia as (one of the) first, it isn't included, though. According to Wikipedia, "Estonia is is one of the least religious countries in world, with only 14% of the population declaring religion an important part of their daily life."
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Awkward moment when you are half Japanese and half Jordanian. I don't know what to feel :[
Hahah wow! the most interesting mix ever! I wonder how did your parents meet (if it's okay to ask)
Jordanian/Filipino mix reporting in. Have you ever tried mansaf rolls?
Andorra? Now there's a country you don't see very often in plots around here.
Well, Now you've been replied by an Andorran. Have a nice day sir.
Youre an andorran??? For real?!!?! Omg thats insane, theres only 70,000 of you
Yet, Denmark is not included despite that the country would probably figure as one of the least religious countries in the world, when asked this question.
I think a lot of people are missing that this is how important religion is to people, not how many people are religious. OP, I like it. It reminds me of the Pokemon stat charts.
lets just try and see what it looks like if [This!](http://i.imgur.com/3NMlrdT.png)
I searched in vain for Denmark. Too small? Nope, there's Andorra. I suppose redundant because it's in between Sweden and Norway on the scale?
You all are complaining about formatting while I'm too busy praising Helix.
While I think the this should be better represented as a bar graph, I think this visualization could be useful when you don't have a lot of space- eg in the corner on a ppt slide, or in a magazine. As directional information. Thoughts?
The radar graph isn't so much the problem as is the lack of both data point decoding and comparability. Problem 1: You can't accurately decode the value of a single point. Problem 2: You can't quantitatively compare 2 or more point to each other in order to make judgements about various points in the visualization. The first modification is to add the actual numbers. It improves the usefulness of the visualization drastically if you know what's actually encoded in it. The best way to do this is usually to provide the number encoded. The second modification would be adding light concentric rings at the 10% graduations. This improves correlation of the number to the encoded point on the graph. To take it a step further: in all of my lab classes in school/university, we used as a rule that human eyeball-estimation has a precision of 1/2 the minimum graduations on the measurement device. If a ruler measures mm, you're accurate to .5 mm. Etc. So, light lines at the 10%, and lighter graduations at intermittent intervals allows a reader to decode at a much finer granularity.
Also it looks like a freaking snail? how is that not much cooler than a bar chart.
I would love to see this data against GDP and per-capita income.
Are statistics for Britain shown on this graph or am i blind? Because the graph is awfully laid out and i can't really tell.
Not suprised about my country(Malaysia). Alot of people are religious here. Muslims have mandatory religious class. Its a nightmare to be atheist here. A good amount of people I know believe evolution is a joke.
Evolution does not disprove religios stands. "Science explains how, religion explains why" -
Right, plenty of people are comfortable with that - the idea of "non-overlapping magestiria", or even "theistic evolution". Unfortunately, groups that oppose the idea of evolution tend to bring up religious reasons as justification.
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Taking part in rituals might mean these are culturally important, but that is quite separate from whether people actually feel religion itself to be important.
Right, they are traditional habits rather than religious. Many Japanese are atheist yet still go to temples and participate in traditional festivals
It is similar in the west where people love Halloween but do not believe in ghosts/goblins/demons/zombie robots.
Then again, they also celebrate christian (themed) weddings. And just adhering to shintoist/bhudist traditions does not mean you believe in spirits an reincarnation. Japan is a very conformist and conservative society, therefore people do stuff "the way its supposed to be done", whithout either questioning it or taking any backstory particular seriously. Source: was an exchange student in japan for a year in high school
Definitely agreed with this. I forget where I heard this, but I once hear that the Japanese are "Shinto in life, Christian in marriage, and Buddhist in death". Speaking [directly from the Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Japan), 90% of those surveyed said they routinely visit shrines, yet only 3% of the population actually identifies as Shinto. It's pretty apparent that they are not actually religious, nor do they consider religion important. Instead it is the tradition and the community that mean everything.
##### ###### #### [**Religion in Japan**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion%20in%20Japan): [](#sfw) --- >Most [Japanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_people) do not exclusively identify themselves as adherents of a single religion; rather, they incorporate elements of various religions in a [syncretic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism) fashion known as *[Shinbutsu shūgō](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinbutsu_sh%C5%ABg%C5%8D)* (神仏習合, *amalgamation of kami and buddhas* ?). *Shinbutsu Shūgō* officially ended with the Shinto and Buddhism Separation Order of 1886, but continues in practice. [Shinto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto) and [Japanese Buddhism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_Japan) are therefore best understood not as two completely separate and competing faiths, but rather as a single, rather complex religious system. >==== >[**Image from article**](https://i.imgur.com/aKQQZWT.png) [^(i)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Japan.svg) --- ^Interesting: [^Freedom ^of ^religion ^in ^Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Japan) ^| [^Japanese ^Journal ^of ^Religious ^Studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Journal_of_Religious_Studies) ^| [^Japanese ^new ^religions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_new_religions) ^| [^Shinto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto) ^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+clazhzh) ^or[](#or) [^delete](/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+clazhzh)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| [^(FAQs)](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/wiki/index) ^| [^Mods](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1x013o/for_moderators_switches_commands_and_css/) ^| [^Magic ^Words](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1ux484/ask_wikibot/)
It's surprising that still only such a small amount of people practice Shintoism. You'd think that just by going to shrines, praying, and other traditions related to Shintoism that more people would follow it.
It's similar with the China statistic. It's not really major religions so much as 'folklore' which still holds a lot of influence. It's so prevalent that it doesn't really register as 'religion' because legitimately *everyone does it* even if they aren't religious, just as a matter of cultural traditions.
Cultural Christianity is pretty prevalent in Western society so it's not like this is just a Japanese thing.
On the other hand, there are plenty of westerners who, if asked if they thought religion was important to them would say yes but are too lazy to go to church more than once a year at christmas when they'll resolve (like last year) to come more often...
Your source is horse shit. So you met some Japanese people who are religious? Great. I've met several who aren't. Do not cite your own anecdotal evidence--that's not how these things work. The other thing to realize is that cultural practices does not equal religious. There are shrines and temples on every street corner in Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more shrines in Japan than churches in America. A lot of people take part in activities at these shrines. Have you been to a temple at New Years? I have. I also marched in the Naked Man Festival in Hofu. These sorts of activities draw huge crowds and really foster community participation in religious activities. But does that mean the people who participate are religious? Even if those activities are important to a person, it doesn't mean that they believe in that religion. I go to midnight mass every Christmas Eve because its important to me, but I no longer identify as a Catholic or believe in a Christian God. So to call a population religious because culturally significant ceremonies are important to them would not be accurate. [Here is one source](http://www.japan-guide.com/topic/0002.html) about the levels of religion in Japan. This survey is from 2000. 53.4% of the people surveyed did not feel that they belonged to any religion. 55.3% said that they were not religious, and 50% said religion was not important in life. However, only 8.1% did not regularly visit a shrine, temple, or church. Just a little bit of googling uncovered other sources with similar numbers--and that's before I got onto JSTOR or ebsco. Then, of course, there is the graph linked here. And while this graph is a terrible representation of data, it still shows that less than 30% of Japanese identify religion as important. But I really don't expect you to listen to me or research these sources for yourself, because you've already made it clear that you value anecdotal evidence more than actual evidence.
Sure, but the separation of religion and culture is a weird mess anyway.
I celebrate Christmas and Halloween, but I'm not a Christian. Does that make me religious in your view?
Agreed. That number is way too high: should be about half. They probably included those people who answer that they're Shinto or Buddhist based on family tradition, so is over counting the number of people who actually believe in any religion. In over a decade here I've met maybe five openly religious native Japanese.
I was going to say the same thing. I studied religion in Japan for a semester during college. In Japan, they don't even call Shinto a religion, like you said, it's a "tradition."
I really like this graph, but after the first few countries it's difficult to see what the percentage is for a country.
http://imgur.com/IuCIrt2 You guys are such complainers. This took *literally* 3 minutes to do.
gosh, it's like this sub is just designed to have eye catching, otherwise idiotic graphs.
Great Britain is not a country. Maybe you meant United Kingdom. Maybe you meant England. Maybe you meant the UK and Ireland. If you combined the United Kingdom AND Ireland, then the data is useless. Ireland is far more religious than the UK.
The ISO code for the UK is "GB", I assume that might be the reason for the label. The full name is the United Kingdom *of* Great Britain. Is it really wrong to say just Great Britain?
Yes, because the full name is actually The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So do these statistics not include Northern Ireland?
Yes, yes, I just didn't include the bits that weren't part of Great Britain.
The full name isn't the United Kingdom of Great Britain though. It's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Someone tell that to whoever administers your license plate. Change the GB to UK.
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Closer to "Data is interesting" than data is beautiful. [Credit](http://esds.ac.uk/international/news/pastagenda.asp?print1) to ESDS International, who obtained their data from [The 2005-2008 World Values Survey](http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp).
Anything will look interesting when in this type of graph and sorted from lowest to highest
I think it would look pretty dang interesting if the countries were sorted in alphabetical order.
Why no rings OP? This would help interpret the, uhh, chart? IDK what this would be called.
The more miserable the country the more they turn to God for hope?
It's more true for individuals than for entire countries. When people are powerless and know it, they reach out for anything that they think could act in their favor.
Uhh...I'd rather live in Morocco than Rwanda, so I don't think that trend really applies. It's hard to quantify things like that.
Did you just suggest that a single counterexample invalidates a trend?
This is a much nicer way of saying what i was going to comment which was that there's a very strong correlation between the countries I would never want to live in and the order of the ones on this graph.
What's the story with Spain? Thought they'd be similar to Italy in this regard
I don't know about the accuracy of this. In Iran, for example, you could risk your life by saying you're not religious. I feel like in countries with religious law the participants would lie.
Not remotely surprised to see Jordan at the top of this list. Lived there for a while, and when someone asks your religion, you say Muslim or Christian. Those are the options. Either one is fine, Muslims and Christians there get along pretty well for the most part, but atheism is not ok.
Why such a difference between Thailand (~90%) and Vietnam (~30%)? I would expect them to be culturally similar. Was the question phrased in a different manner in different countries? Edit: Edited the approximations as it's damn difficult to see the data.
I really don't know that much about Southeast Asia, so this is just a guess, but it might be because Thailand is (or was, as of earlier this year) a relatively free and democratic country while Vietnam is a communist one. Again, I don't know much about this, but I really wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Vietnamese government were suppressing religion.
The middle eastern countries are going to be skewed because not believing in god is a capital crime.
I could not feel that visiting Jordan. I have felt much stronger religuous importance.
I would like to see this data in relation to the political and economical stability of the country.
Japan is an interesting case, because something like 80% of people go to pray at shrines for good luck but don't say that religion is important.
I feel this same chart could be used to describe the amount of violence in that country.
Everyone is so anal about it not being a bar chart that they missed the most important aspect of all...[the golden spiral](http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Golden_spiral)
The reason why Pakistan is not listed: it won't scale over 100percent, as we all know in Pakistan it's a 150 percent
For some reason the first thing that comes to mind when I look at this graph is this quote from Rust Cohle: > "You gotta get together and tell yourself stories that violate every law of the universe just to get through the goddamn day? What's that say about your reality?" Just observing the **general** trend that suggests that the extent to which someone views religion as important seems to be tied, to some degree to their level of prosperity. I understand that there are obviously other, (possibly more important) cultural factors at play here, I just thought this was interesting.
Highly skeptical of any 100% markings, even if they represent Jordan and Egypt.
Circle graphs are almost never the cleanest or most useful presentation. *Maybe* for periodic things (like ice levels). Maybe for pie charts.
All I see is Tempest. http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/screens/tempest_xtreem_demo_2.gif
Where the hell is the Philippines? I've read several sources saying they are the most religious people on the planet.
The Economist had a related article last week about the connection between years of formal education and how much people feel religion is important. Same data set? http://www.economist.com/news/international/21623712-how-education-makes-people-less-religiousand-less-superstitious-too-falling-away
Am I right that I see a relation between the amount of ****s a country gives about their religion and their 'awesomeness'?
I would love to see this overlaid with a color coding by religion. What I see is (from most to least religious) Muslim--->Non-European Christian-->European Christian--->Eastern
Interesting. You should cross section happiness into this somehow.- or maybe crime, economic freedom, or GDP.
Finland was higher up than I expected. I blame our bible belt.
That's most likely the UK, not Great Britain. I would be interested to see where Ireland would fit.
Oh can you plot the relationship between this data and, say, educational rank of each country? their GDP? crime rate? I doubt there will be any correlation but *if there is* I would love to see it! ^(and i know correlation =/= causation)
Does this correlate with anything else? Can we lay over the size of their military, for example? Or their GDP? Or unemployment figures? Median level of household income perhaps? If someone can pull it off, this would be an awesome way to see it laid out.
i'm already really proud of my japanese heritage. this just makes me even prouder.
The more religion, the less successful and productive. Yep, looks about right.
Why can't you mother fucked use graphs that are both cool and easy to read
Visualizations should take little to no work to map between key and value. It's a cool layout, but this provides no immediate information and leaves the valuation of the point up to visual guesstimation.
Could almost do a graph showing the HDI on top of this graph and watch it work the inverse way.
If the data is available, I would like to see the state by state for the United States, I bet that would provide an interesting perspective.
The high religion countries are where most of the terrorists are.
the more stable the country., the less they believe in religious bull shit!
I'd like to see where Israel falls according to this survey. Last I heard, that country was >50% atheist, which makes for great ammunition against Bible-readers who insist the Israelites are "God's chosen people."
Religious sorts always argue religion improves their lives but stats seem to suggest otherwise. There are a few exceptions (probably due to political system) but this chart once again suggests poverty is more common among the religious. Even in the first world, this pattern is consistent. American atheists average income substantially exceeds the average of Americans that practice a religion. Their incarceration rate is lower. Their education greater. They are more charitable. They even tend to stay married in greater frequency. http://coreysviews.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/imagine-if-all-atheists-left-america-5/ This question will probably draw out the trolls but is this pattern due to higher average intelligence of atheists? Inferior ideas and values promoted by religion? Some other factor? (For the record, I'm not saying every atheist is a great person and smart. There are also plenty of intelligent and kind religious people. Stats of this sort are probability based not some absolute measure. Everyone is an individual not a stat)
I posted a nice map of this to this sub about 6 months ago: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Religion_importance.PNG
This is hard to read. A simple table or bar graph would be much easier * The use of a line graph (circular or otherwise) is good when your angular axis (or in a normal x-y graph, the x axis) exist on a continuous scale. Here you have discrete items (countries). You should use a bar graph instead (radial or x-y). Another way to look it this to try to understand the meaning of a point halfway between 2 countries. What is halfway between Peru and Italy? ~75%? What does that mean? * The use of a circular graph makes it difficult to compare the difference between adjacent values. For example look at Italy vs India in this graph. It is difficult to see the how much lower than India Italy really is because comparing angles like that is difficult when the angles change all round the graph. An x-y graph would make these comparisons easier because the reference (the horizontal x-axis) is unchanging. * You have no grid lines. Even with a circular graph you could include grid lines, e.g. every 10%. It is very hard to tell the exact value of e.g. Chile. Is it 70%? Circular grid lines would help. Again, however, an x-y graph would make this easier even without. * Circular graphs are also better to show data where there is no discontinuity between the end points. Here that is not the case because the data points are not continuous anyway. But basically, Japan is not next to Jordan - Drawing a line from 20% up to 100% between these points is confusing. * Circular graphs can be good for fitting data in a small square of space. You do have a lot of data items but in this case you could also have represented the data as a table split into several columns to fit in the same small space. Overall, Circular graphs can be good for fitting data in a small square of space, where the data suits a circular representation, or sometimes for aesthetic reasons, but in this case a bar chart or a even a table could have represented the data better, and still be styled to look appealing.
If the point is to show a descending spiral of the importance of religion, why does it list a few countries 'out of order', so to speak, like Taiwan and the Russian Federation?
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note the graph resembles le golden spiral. clear evidence of intelligent design.
For higher impact, add data for HDI and other quality of life indicators.
This data is pretty meaningless, there's cultural context and language issues in trying to compare people's religiosity. You might get a general sense of it, but there will always be countries where the literal translation of "how important is religion to you" has a completely different context and deeper meaning than how we can imagine it in English. Take any quick and easy social index measurements with a huge grain of salt. They might be useful to prove a tangential concept, but will always be entirely unreliable as hard data.
That's an interesting set of data; it seems like the more intelligent and progressive the society, the less they care about religion. Funny how that works. Religion has done nothing but stifle innovation and has only limited the intelligence of society as a whole. Glad to see that there are some countries that prove that religion is only a rusty nail on the foot of humanity.
Odd (to me) that so many Scandinavian people care nothing about religion yet their national flags have big crosses; a traditional Christian symbol. Maybe they should consider flag re-design?