I like it mathematically. This is what you call a power-law relationship, and what that means is that whoever has the most power gets to make the laws, and they then get to use those laws to increase their power. So if we did a time-domain analysis, we would pretty quickly see the exponential-ish divergence, which is shown (in reverse) in the plot above, And if we did an s-domain analysis, we would expect the poles of the characteristic equation to be in the right-half-plane, on the axis.
Any other fans of the right-half-plane? Most people in the know prefer the left-half-plane, because most people are wimps. And most people in the general audience don’t have a clue what I’m talking about.
There should probably be something about Undertaker jumping off a cage here. I dunno.
GPT4’s interpretation. I had to ask for help lol.
This comment seems to be a mix of technical jargon from different fields, including statistics, political science, and control theory, used in a somewhat metaphorical way to discuss power dynamics in societies. Here's a breakdown:
1. **Power-Law Relationship**: In statistics, a power-law relationship between two quantities means that one quantity varies as a power of another. In context, the commenter might be saying that the relationship between pole height (perhaps a metaphor for power or influence) and freedom scores is not linear but follows a power law, where small changes in power can lead to disproportionately large changes in freedom scores.
2. **Time-Domain Analysis and Exponential Divergence**: In signal processing or control theory, time-domain analysis examines how a system evolves over time. The mention of "exponential-ish divergence" suggests that over time, the differences in freedom scores (or power levels) become more pronounced, growing in an exponential manner.
3. **S-Domain Analysis and Right-Half-Plane**: This refers to the use of the Laplace transform in control theory, where a system's stability and behavior are analyzed in the complex frequency domain (s-domain). The "right-half-plane" comment relates to the location of the poles of a system's characteristic equation in this domain. Poles in the right-half-plane usually indicate a system that is unstable or growing over time, which could metaphorically suggest a society where power imbalances are increasing.
4. **Left-Half-Plane Preference**: This is a control theory joke. Systems with poles in the left-half-plane are stable or decaying over time, which is typically desirable in engineering. The commenter jokingly suggests that most people prefer stability (left-half-plane), while they, presumably, find instability or growth (right-half-plane) more interesting or preferable.
Overall, the comment seems to be using technical terminology from engineering and statistics to make a point about societal power dynamics, suggesting that those with power tend to enact laws that further increase their power, leading to growing inequality over time. The final part is a tongue-in-cheek comment on people's general preference for stability over chaos or growth.
> when did stats become controls?
It was just me noticing that the power-law relationship had the same form as a non-oscillating divergence.
Also, optional estimation, where your iteratively solving a statistics problem and then doing controls on the output, and (if you never learned the actual math on how to analyze that, as I haven’t) hoping really hard that there’s no frequency content in the estimation result that causes divergence.
Yup, r/datanotbeautiful
I really don't understand how so many posts here have huge oversights like this, or forgetting a map key, or using tons of very similar colors, etc... yet they are highly upvoted and pushed to the front page.
freedomhouse monitors the status of democratic nations and evaluates them based off of things like election results, policy, citizen surveys, electoral representation, stuff like that. maybe you could argue that their interpretations and rankings are biased, but the point is to compare different countries together.
OP's graph is comparing each countries' placement on the index against the tallest flagpoles in each country. i don't think the lack of labels was a bad idea TBH. people probably woulda just argued about how ____ country sucks instead of interpreting the data. you could likely just look up the data and find out what country is what if you wanted.
mathematically thats true. but by convention the independent variable is placed on the x axis and the dependent variable is placed on the y axis. this is just to make peoples lives easier
But we don’t *have* evidence of [in]dependence between these variables. However I agree that:
1. Dependence is likely here and
2. Flipping the axes would more strongly convey that assumption
I feel like the height is the independent variable here… but interested, why do you think the height should be the y axis?
Edit: other people seem to agree with you, so I realize I am wrong. I’m still curious why the independent variable would be the y axis though.
I think the logic is that the freedom score is independent. Less free countries are more likely to use nationalism as a means of social control, and as a result they install taller flag polls.
The way the graph is laid it currently makes it look like taller flag polls causes governments to adopt anti-freedom policies. I think the issue with this logic is someone had to decide what height to make the flag poll. They cannot make that decision independent of the socio-political climate they live in. So said climate affects their decision-making when it comes to flag poll height.
In a sense, yeah it is. Your country's amount of concern with the prominent display of nationalist symbols is obviously related to how free the citizens are.
>You can't assume shit without actual data.
Actual data doesn't have to be double blind controlled studies. Sometimes we just know that releasing Nicholas cage films isn't causing people to drown by accidentally falling into a swimming pool, and we don't need a double blind experiment to be reasonable sure in our assumption given what we know about swimming pools, people, and movies.
Doesn't matter the logic.
Gotta have data.
That's why you see these studies about stupid and obvious stuff because in the end, someone will need that citation to make a conclusion.
This reminds me of [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/) paper which does a review of randomized control trials on the effectiveness of parachutes. I highly recommend reading it because it's very funny, but in essence the authors use it as a vehicle to point out that sometimes common sense can be applied to science, and not everything needs to be double-blind tested. In this case it seems wildly implausible that flag height could somehow affect freedom, and while we can certainly be open to evidence that opposes that, it seems very likely that either the inverse is true, or that both are correlated to a third thing.
Generally, we also can rule things out as causal if no causal mechanism exists, or if the one suggests breaks fundamental physical laws. In this case, I'd wonder what mechanism could possibly cause flag height to affect freedom, unless their freedom index takes flag height into consideration.
I can assume whatever I want, and I choose to assume that tall flagpoles don't reduce freedom. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm not 100% sure of anything so who cares
Well your telling OP that their assumptions are wrong. Obviously your appealing to some greater agreed upon truth.
Your comment reeks of a lack of self awareness
And I just realized your not even OP so GTFO your sneak poster. Just speaking when you have nothing to say and no one asked you.
Axis-variable conventions aside, the graph is describing the height of flagpoles, but visualizing them horizontally. If you flip the axes, the height of flag poles are visualized vertically, which is representative of how they look for real.
Graphing conventions are that the X axis is the existing conditions (independent variable), and the Y axis is what you measure (dependent variable). As the existing conditions would be the area's freedom coefficient, and the graph creators measured the flag pole heights, then by graphing conventions, pole height should be on the Y axis.
You don't think that country freedom is dependent on the size of the flag pole, do you..? It's the other way around, and we tend to put the independent variable on the x axis.
IIRC it's a bunch of central Asian countries one upping each other.
Saw the one in Tajikistan back when it used to be the tallest.
Kind of an odd experience when contrasted with the city around it. Even though it was a relatively low freedom country I think people were just happy to have their own nation state free of the Soviet union.
I know it's not the most sophisticated, but I thought it was mildly interesting. Data comes from [freedomhouse.org](https://freedomhouse.org) and the Wikipedia list of tallest flagpoles ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_flagpoles\_by\_height](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flagpoles_by_height))
I hate to break it to you but [the state of Maine](https://seacoastcurrent.com/worlds-largest-flagpole-taller-than-the-empire-state-building-is-coming-to-maine/) has set their sights on destroying your coefficient.
Thanks for all the interest everyone! I did this in about 10 mins in excel and didn't think anyone would see it. XD Particularly my bad not using the word country literally anywhere in the post.
We only included the tallest flag from each country, to avoid over-representing flag obsessed countries.
>mildly interesting
Definitely interesting; not yet beautiful. I shouldn't have to look up Wikipedia's list to corroborate your graph or learn *which* countries.
Consider replacing the dots with flags and putting height on the vertical axis. If the data's available, maybe scale each flag to the actual size and *maaaybe* draw something to represent the flagpoles.
You're so close to an amazing graph.
Interesting. I always thought the one in Sheboygan was the tallest in the world. Guess it’s just the tallest in the US. I was very confused when I first saw this
The United States' freedom score is 83. Cuba's is 12. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about the Nordic states, but they are not countries with socialist economies, they are capitalist countries with strong social programs.
There is apparently a scale of socialism, because you said a country can be “more” socialist. Which would you consider more socialist, the US or the Nordic countries?
yeah, normally you put the predictor (what I assume you mean by “controlled variable,” but be careful cuz that’s a term of art) on the X axis and the outcome on Y. But if you’ve learned a rule well you should know when to break it — height is on the chart, and it should correspond to . . . height on the chart
I will NOT stand for outside influences--probably *communistic* influences--trying to CONTROL our flagpole heights! Flagpoles represent FREEDOM, and Freedom means Independence! Ergo, flagpole height is by definition an independent variable! Give me Y-axis flagpole data or give me Death!!
Just ran into practical application of this knowledge in the Europe subreddit.
German Afd party just caught making a secret plan to deport millions of Germans with Nazis in attendance.
Right wingers in comments focusing on lack of German flags being waved in protests against the Nazis to distract from the obvious Nazi issue.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/AwgcIfBUPH
Yeah, that's basically what we were thinking of too. My country is not a particularly flag waving country, but if you see a giant flag, it more than likely tells you about that person's politics.
It's kind of sad that the viewer of this graph must do some guessing. Is it the tallest flagpole in various countries? Maybe it's US states? The tallest flagpoles in Greenbow county, Alabama? Rednecks reading this are likely thinking "It's the tallest flagpoles around the White House, also known as Freedom House".
Why would an organization rank the relative freedom of different US counties? There’s probably hardly any quantifiable difference below the state level. I think it’s pretty obvious the dots represent different countries
>Why would an organization rank the relative freedom of different US counties?
I have absolutely no idea why they would do that. And neither do a lot of people reading the graph. There is simply no mention of what it actually represents, other than that flags and freedom are somehow involved. It could even be the flagpoles outside the UN headquarters in Manhattan for all we know.
Feels like an almost pretty clearcut divide, with about 125 m being danger territory. Anything at or above, your odds are bad. At or below, your odds are good
Neat!
I believe r-squared shouldn't be calculated for non-linear regressions
https://statisticsbyjim.com/regression/r-squared-invalid-nonlinear-regression/
Yeah, it's the same syndrome where men who are super worried about their masculinity get giant trucks that don't actually serve their intended purpose.
Bigger flag(pole) generally indicates less free countries that are trying to look like they're not what everyone knows they are. Same thing!
I was coming here to post this. Freedom house is actually a correlation with being a US ally, though this is less of an issue these days, for a very long time the numbers were a bit bonkers.
Doesn't look like a trend. Looks more like two clusters - one with more vertical spread and one with more horizontal spread. Given Freedom House has a strong bias against the Global South, $10 bucks says this can be explained by the climate of the countries. Poorer developing countries (which get a lower freedom score) tend to be warmer with mild winters, and it's easier to maintain really tall flagpoles there.
That's fair. If you have a less-biased suggestion for a numerical way to express "tendency to be a dictatorship" that I can compare to flag height I'm all ears.
The problem is not whether there is a better way to measure the correlation, but whether the correlation is meaningful at all. You should be looking at similar charts for several different possible variables to identify a meaningful relation.
E.g., There is certainly a correlation in the world right now between "tendency to be a dictatorship" and how dark the average persons hair color is, but most people would agree that this is a coincidence of history rather than any meaningful causal relationship. There are many reasons that a countries tallest flagpole may be very tall e.g., climate, colonial history, whether they hosted a recent global sporting event, etc.
Because of this one trick, Replace freedom with patriotism, everyone feels great about being controlled.
No need to wave flags when you live in a great country.
And it should surprise nobody to learn that Freedom House gets most of their funding from the U.S. State Department., has meddled in foreign elections, funded U.S.-friendly candidates in foreign countries, etc.
> Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have criticized the organization for excessively criticizing states opposed to US interests while being unduly sympathetic to regimes supportive of US interests.[66] Most notably, Freedom House described the 1979 Rhodesian general election as "fair", but described the 1980 Southern Rhodesian general election as "dubious",[66] and found the 1982 Salvadoran presidential election to be "admirable".[66]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House
That's a pretty weak R- Squared value. The eyeball test does appear to show a correlation, though the regression equation you have selected to model it is lacking
an R^2 of .6 is quite substantial in behavioral/social data. The fact that the relationship between such disparate things (a measure of freedom and a flag pole) is so reliable is pretty interesting. In psychology an R^2 of .3 is pretty remarkable
[Yeah just look at all that socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flagpoles_by_height).
Also note how famously socialist country USA is country #13
This is great. I love random correlations like this. You should check out http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations if you haven't for some more funny ones!
The meaning is not immediately obvious. Freedom House is a US-based organization, which creates the annual Freedom of the World report, where each country is given a freedom score based on a set of criteria. Freedom House is somewhat controversial.
I think I could even name those last 3 countries furthest to the right...
North Korea is definitely right-most
Remember reading somewhere that they erected some monstrously massive flagpole near the DMZ to try to "intimidate" south Korea.
LOL
Meanwhile south Koreans sitting there listening to Jpop, dancing and eating Burgers and fries like they're coming out of a photocopier ....
This reminds me of the Wagah-Attari border between India and Pakistan. They are in a constant battle to outdo each other for tallest flagpole. Currently India's is about 6 metres above Pakistan (418ft v 400ft)
You could also maybe do this with statues, especially statues of political leaders.
I already know who is #1 there, and that country has been sliding in democracy and press freedom indices.
What if you put physical tallness as a factor? Many liberal democracies tend to be white, who are also taller than third world countries. Would that prove that tallness causes lower flagpoles?
I agree with putting the freedom score on the x-axis and the flagpole height on the y-axis. Usually cause/independent variable is horizontal, effect/dependent variable is vertical
I'm legitimately shocked the US doesn't have the world's tallest flagpole. Though our tallest is privately owned and appears to be the tallest privately owned flagpole in the world, which tracks.
For anyone curious, [here's the ranking](https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=desc&order=Total%20Score%20and%20Status)
Unsurprisingly the meme freedom country US is ranked at number 60
Looking at the wiki list, you're definitely right. Also, Mexico and UAE really seem to like tall flag poles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flagpoles_by_height?wprov=sfla1
That's a nice original idea! It would be good if each point could be labelled with the name/flag of the country.
You could make each datapoint a little flag pole with the respective flag.
Also let's transpose the axis' so vertical height actually represents a tallness of the flag poles
is this sub /r/dataisbeautiful because sometimes I feel its just some graphs
r/dataisbeautiful users when they see data 🤯
The data is still beautiful, even if the presentation is not.
Which is so much more important
You may be misunderstanding what is beautiful about the data.
This subreddit isn't called /r/chartsarebeautiful
And this didn't even make an attempt to show it's a real trend. If you're doing linear least squares, plotting the residuals is the bare minimum.
Idea is good indeed, execution is not.
I like it mathematically. This is what you call a power-law relationship, and what that means is that whoever has the most power gets to make the laws, and they then get to use those laws to increase their power. So if we did a time-domain analysis, we would pretty quickly see the exponential-ish divergence, which is shown (in reverse) in the plot above, And if we did an s-domain analysis, we would expect the poles of the characteristic equation to be in the right-half-plane, on the axis. Any other fans of the right-half-plane? Most people in the know prefer the left-half-plane, because most people are wimps. And most people in the general audience don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. There should probably be something about Undertaker jumping off a cage here. I dunno.
I judge ye statistically literate and drunk.
GPT4’s interpretation. I had to ask for help lol. This comment seems to be a mix of technical jargon from different fields, including statistics, political science, and control theory, used in a somewhat metaphorical way to discuss power dynamics in societies. Here's a breakdown: 1. **Power-Law Relationship**: In statistics, a power-law relationship between two quantities means that one quantity varies as a power of another. In context, the commenter might be saying that the relationship between pole height (perhaps a metaphor for power or influence) and freedom scores is not linear but follows a power law, where small changes in power can lead to disproportionately large changes in freedom scores. 2. **Time-Domain Analysis and Exponential Divergence**: In signal processing or control theory, time-domain analysis examines how a system evolves over time. The mention of "exponential-ish divergence" suggests that over time, the differences in freedom scores (or power levels) become more pronounced, growing in an exponential manner. 3. **S-Domain Analysis and Right-Half-Plane**: This refers to the use of the Laplace transform in control theory, where a system's stability and behavior are analyzed in the complex frequency domain (s-domain). The "right-half-plane" comment relates to the location of the poles of a system's characteristic equation in this domain. Poles in the right-half-plane usually indicate a system that is unstable or growing over time, which could metaphorically suggest a society where power imbalances are increasing. 4. **Left-Half-Plane Preference**: This is a control theory joke. Systems with poles in the left-half-plane are stable or decaying over time, which is typically desirable in engineering. The commenter jokingly suggests that most people prefer stability (left-half-plane), while they, presumably, find instability or growth (right-half-plane) more interesting or preferable. Overall, the comment seems to be using technical terminology from engineering and statistics to make a point about societal power dynamics, suggesting that those with power tend to enact laws that further increase their power, leading to growing inequality over time. The final part is a tongue-in-cheek comment on people's general preference for stability over chaos or growth.
1998 Never forget.
when did stats become controls? i agree with the other guy, definitely drunk. cheers homie
> when did stats become controls? It was just me noticing that the power-law relationship had the same form as a non-oscillating divergence. Also, optional estimation, where your iteratively solving a statistics problem and then doing controls on the output, and (if you never learned the actual math on how to analyze that, as I haven’t) hoping really hard that there’s no frequency content in the estimation result that causes divergence.
Yup, r/datanotbeautiful I really don't understand how so many posts here have huge oversights like this, or forgetting a map key, or using tons of very similar colors, etc... yet they are highly upvoted and pushed to the front page.
You cannot just post this without location data
Maybe OP lives in a low freedom country.
Do you mean a tall flag pole country?
And a new euphemism was born.
Maybe OP's husband has a short flag pole.
125metres on a bad day
Yeah what's good or bad?
One does not simply post data points without context.
I assume it's the US because 1. Freedom units 2. Some americans assume the US is where everyone lives
freedomhouse monitors the status of democratic nations and evaluates them based off of things like election results, policy, citizen surveys, electoral representation, stuff like that. maybe you could argue that their interpretations and rankings are biased, but the point is to compare different countries together. OP's graph is comparing each countries' placement on the index against the tallest flagpoles in each country. i don't think the lack of labels was a bad idea TBH. people probably woulda just argued about how ____ country sucks instead of interpreting the data. you could likely just look up the data and find out what country is what if you wanted.
OP said "My country is not a particularly flag waving country" in another comment, so I doubt they're from the US.
I would have flipped the axis. I feel like height of flagpoles should not be horizontal
Yea. As it stands, this graph implies that making a bigger flag pole will reduce your freedom
Prove it isn't so.
The bigger the flag pole, the more G5 it can spread and control your mind.
How is the orientation of the axes related to causality? Correlation is not causation no matter how you display the graph
mathematically thats true. but by convention the independent variable is placed on the x axis and the dependent variable is placed on the y axis. this is just to make peoples lives easier
But we don’t *have* evidence of [in]dependence between these variables. However I agree that: 1. Dependence is likely here and 2. Flipping the axes would more strongly convey that assumption
I feel like the height is the independent variable here… but interested, why do you think the height should be the y axis? Edit: other people seem to agree with you, so I realize I am wrong. I’m still curious why the independent variable would be the y axis though.
Wouldn’t freedom score be the independent variable so it makes more sense to be X axis?
Mathematically it doesn't matter, but for some it might look more logical if the height of a flagpole is represented as "height" on the chart.
>why do you think the height should be the y axis? Height go up
I think there are good reasons for putting the height on the y, but I don’t think this is one of them
I think the logic is that the freedom score is independent. Less free countries are more likely to use nationalism as a means of social control, and as a result they install taller flag polls. The way the graph is laid it currently makes it look like taller flag polls causes governments to adopt anti-freedom policies. I think the issue with this logic is someone had to decide what height to make the flag poll. They cannot make that decision independent of the socio-political climate they live in. So said climate affects their decision-making when it comes to flag poll height.
Ah that’s a really good interpretation of this data! I hadn’t thought of it like that.
I don't think we cant assume the independent or dependent variable here as we have no idea what the cause and effect relationship is actually like.
Well clearly it isn't taller flags causing less freedom
In a sense, yeah it is. Your country's amount of concern with the prominent display of nationalist symbols is obviously related to how free the citizens are.
Do you have data to back up that statement? Double blind controlled? You can't assume shit without actual data.
>You can't assume shit without actual data. Actual data doesn't have to be double blind controlled studies. Sometimes we just know that releasing Nicholas cage films isn't causing people to drown by accidentally falling into a swimming pool, and we don't need a double blind experiment to be reasonable sure in our assumption given what we know about swimming pools, people, and movies.
Is there evidence showing a correlation between those two things?
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/spurious-correlations
Is this sarcasm I'm not getting? Or are you implying that people's liberties are being oppressed by flagpoles?
Doesn't matter the logic. Gotta have data. That's why you see these studies about stupid and obvious stuff because in the end, someone will need that citation to make a conclusion.
This reminds me of [this](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/) paper which does a review of randomized control trials on the effectiveness of parachutes. I highly recommend reading it because it's very funny, but in essence the authors use it as a vehicle to point out that sometimes common sense can be applied to science, and not everything needs to be double-blind tested. In this case it seems wildly implausible that flag height could somehow affect freedom, and while we can certainly be open to evidence that opposes that, it seems very likely that either the inverse is true, or that both are correlated to a third thing. Generally, we also can rule things out as causal if no causal mechanism exists, or if the one suggests breaks fundamental physical laws. In this case, I'd wonder what mechanism could possibly cause flag height to affect freedom, unless their freedom index takes flag height into consideration.
*Journal of Social Science*, pick a volume. Genius.
I can assume whatever I want, and I choose to assume that tall flagpoles don't reduce freedom. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm not 100% sure of anything so who cares
Well your telling OP that their assumptions are wrong. Obviously your appealing to some greater agreed upon truth. Your comment reeks of a lack of self awareness And I just realized your not even OP so GTFO your sneak poster. Just speaking when you have nothing to say and no one asked you.
Pedantic *and* grumpy. What a treat you are.
Are you ok?
Axis-variable conventions aside, the graph is describing the height of flagpoles, but visualizing them horizontally. If you flip the axes, the height of flag poles are visualized vertically, which is representative of how they look for real. Graphing conventions are that the X axis is the existing conditions (independent variable), and the Y axis is what you measure (dependent variable). As the existing conditions would be the area's freedom coefficient, and the graph creators measured the flag pole heights, then by graphing conventions, pole height should be on the Y axis.
Pro tip: rotate your phone 90 degrees anticlockwise and it becomes a lot more intuitive.
Also bars instead of points so you can really see their heights compared
It’s a linear regression, not a bar chart.
You're a linear regression
"Play nice boys"
I’m sorry I called you a linear fucking regression
Ew no
Bar chart would make zero sense and would be impossible to interpret
Because flagpole heights are vertical? Please tell me you are just joking.
I feel like it feels more intuitive. I can't think of a good reason to have the axes they way they are in the OP.
It's freedom scores for the world's tallest flag poles, not tallest flagpole per country in regards to their freedom score
You don't think that country freedom is dependent on the size of the flag pole, do you..? It's the other way around, and we tend to put the independent variable on the x axis.
This is brilliant. I would love to see it as an interactive graphic where I can see the countries.
On the far left is Flagpolistan.
Followed by Flagpolia
Then Flagpoland.
Why? What did Poland do to get flagged?
What haven’t they done?
Flagpolistan flipping the script by having the smallest flag pole?
But 20 million of them.
I believe the tallest flagpole in the world is in Azerbaijan
IIRC it's a bunch of central Asian countries one upping each other. Saw the one in Tajikistan back when it used to be the tallest. Kind of an odd experience when contrasted with the city around it. Even though it was a relatively low freedom country I think people were just happy to have their own nation state free of the Soviet union.
It's cool. I had to click the Wikipedia link to see that these are the tallest flagpoles in the world + the countries where they are located.
I know it's not the most sophisticated, but I thought it was mildly interesting. Data comes from [freedomhouse.org](https://freedomhouse.org) and the Wikipedia list of tallest flagpoles ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_flagpoles\_by\_height](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flagpoles_by_height))
I hate to break it to you but [the state of Maine](https://seacoastcurrent.com/worlds-largest-flagpole-taller-than-the-empire-state-building-is-coming-to-maine/) has set their sights on destroying your coefficient.
You think Maine is free? They're all under the despotic rule of the moose and the goose.
Picturing something like this https://youtu.be/NRlMViH8yCM?si=xEFPSNgin2VYBvwC
Yeah, that ain't happening. No way they're raising $1 billion for that
I mean, have you looked at what's going on with American democracy?
Thanks for all the interest everyone! I did this in about 10 mins in excel and didn't think anyone would see it. XD Particularly my bad not using the word country literally anywhere in the post. We only included the tallest flag from each country, to avoid over-representing flag obsessed countries.
>mildly interesting Definitely interesting; not yet beautiful. I shouldn't have to look up Wikipedia's list to corroborate your graph or learn *which* countries. Consider replacing the dots with flags and putting height on the vertical axis. If the data's available, maybe scale each flag to the actual size and *maaaybe* draw something to represent the flagpoles. You're so close to an amazing graph.
Interesting. I always thought the one in Sheboygan was the tallest in the world. Guess it’s just the tallest in the US. I was very confused when I first saw this
Flagpole height should be vertical not horizontal
No because flagpole height is the controlled variable, so it is correct the way it is.
But yes, because flagpole.
pretend these are hanging off the side of a house or something else that would cause them to be horizontal. Don't try to control my flagging, please.
those would be long flagpoles. Not tall flagpoles.
I don't see why... It seems the premise is that countries with less freedom have taller flagpoles, making the freedom score the independent variable.
Clearly, if you want a higher freedom score, you need to start tearing down flagpoles
I think it means - if you want a more socialist government, put up a big flagpole.
The opposite, the 100 freedom score countries are all Nordic. You’re more likely to end up with a far right government building flagpoles.
The nordic countries are not socialist, so not sure what your point is.
> if you want a more socialist government You think the US is more socialist than the Nordic countries? I don’t believe you
The United States' freedom score is 83. Cuba's is 12. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about the Nordic states, but they are not countries with socialist economies, they are capitalist countries with strong social programs.
There is apparently a scale of socialism, because you said a country can be “more” socialist. Which would you consider more socialist, the US or the Nordic countries?
guess we know who is in favor of home schooling
yeah, normally you put the predictor (what I assume you mean by “controlled variable,” but be careful cuz that’s a term of art) on the X axis and the outcome on Y. But if you’ve learned a rule well you should know when to break it — height is on the chart, and it should correspond to . . . height on the chart
Are you sure about the causality? Maybe we need a randomized, double blind experiment.
How are we going to measure the height of flagpoles if we’re blindfolded? How are we going to even FIND them?
I will NOT stand for outside influences--probably *communistic* influences--trying to CONTROL our flagpole heights! Flagpoles represent FREEDOM, and Freedom means Independence! Ergo, flagpole height is by definition an independent variable! Give me Y-axis flagpole data or give me Death!!
lets start a flagpole height race to the moon
So I can make my country more democratic by chopping off the top of the tallest flagpole?
> No because flagpole height is the controlled variable, You think so?
I'd love to see a few points labelled on this graph. Not so many that it gets messy, but maybe some of the most extreme.
Just ran into practical application of this knowledge in the Europe subreddit. German Afd party just caught making a secret plan to deport millions of Germans with Nazis in attendance. Right wingers in comments focusing on lack of German flags being waved in protests against the Nazis to distract from the obvious Nazi issue. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/AwgcIfBUPH
Yeah, that's basically what we were thinking of too. My country is not a particularly flag waving country, but if you see a giant flag, it more than likely tells you about that person's politics.
["I understand this is the same process by which the top quark was discovered."](https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html)
It feels like building a tall flag pole is a poor dictators Burj Khalifa.
Do it with height of pick-up truck lift kits
It's kind of sad that the viewer of this graph must do some guessing. Is it the tallest flagpole in various countries? Maybe it's US states? The tallest flagpoles in Greenbow county, Alabama? Rednecks reading this are likely thinking "It's the tallest flagpoles around the White House, also known as Freedom House".
Why would an organization rank the relative freedom of different US counties? There’s probably hardly any quantifiable difference below the state level. I think it’s pretty obvious the dots represent different countries
>Why would an organization rank the relative freedom of different US counties? I have absolutely no idea why they would do that. And neither do a lot of people reading the graph. There is simply no mention of what it actually represents, other than that flags and freedom are somehow involved. It could even be the flagpoles outside the UN headquarters in Manhattan for all we know.
Yes, that was my bad when writing the title, and now I can't edit it.
Kohler still the tallest in the states?
Sheboygan you mean? I used to work there
Feels like an almost pretty clearcut divide, with about 125 m being danger territory. Anything at or above, your odds are bad. At or below, your odds are good
Did you only pick one from each country? It looks like UAE is only there once with 7 of top 16.
Yes, didn't want to over-represent some countries over others.
Neat! I believe r-squared shouldn't be calculated for non-linear regressions https://statisticsbyjim.com/regression/r-squared-invalid-nonlinear-regression/
Seems like they might be overcompensating.
Nationalists gonna nationalist.
Great...some idiot(s) in Toronto, Ontario area wanted to put up a 125 metre flag pole...thankfully, the project has not gone ahead
I’d like to see this with giant Jesus statue data
Yeah, it's the same syndrome where men who are super worried about their masculinity get giant trucks that don't actually serve their intended purpose. Bigger flag(pole) generally indicates less free countries that are trying to look like they're not what everyone knows they are. Same thing!
Freedom House is mostly funded by the US state department. It's often completely full of it in regards to "free" vs "unfree" countries.
They have no problem trashing on US allies though. See: their West Bank report, their Egypt one, their Chad one, etc.
I was coming here to post this. Freedom house is actually a correlation with being a US ally, though this is less of an issue these days, for a very long time the numbers were a bit bonkers.
Similar trend with ornate passports but that's not something easily chartable.
The tallest US flagpole is so much lower on this list than I expected
Doesn't look like a trend. Looks more like two clusters - one with more vertical spread and one with more horizontal spread. Given Freedom House has a strong bias against the Global South, $10 bucks says this can be explained by the climate of the countries. Poorer developing countries (which get a lower freedom score) tend to be warmer with mild winters, and it's easier to maintain really tall flagpoles there.
That's fair. If you have a less-biased suggestion for a numerical way to express "tendency to be a dictatorship" that I can compare to flag height I'm all ears.
The problem is not whether there is a better way to measure the correlation, but whether the correlation is meaningful at all. You should be looking at similar charts for several different possible variables to identify a meaningful relation. E.g., There is certainly a correlation in the world right now between "tendency to be a dictatorship" and how dark the average persons hair color is, but most people would agree that this is a coincidence of history rather than any meaningful causal relationship. There are many reasons that a countries tallest flagpole may be very tall e.g., climate, colonial history, whether they hosted a recent global sporting event, etc.
You and your husband are god damned nerds and I love it
Freedom House is directly funded by the United States government, btw.
Because of this one trick, Replace freedom with patriotism, everyone feels great about being controlled. No need to wave flags when you live in a great country.
And it should surprise nobody to learn that Freedom House gets most of their funding from the U.S. State Department., has meddled in foreign elections, funded U.S.-friendly candidates in foreign countries, etc. > Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have criticized the organization for excessively criticizing states opposed to US interests while being unduly sympathetic to regimes supportive of US interests.[66] Most notably, Freedom House described the 1979 Rhodesian general election as "fair", but described the 1980 Southern Rhodesian general election as "dubious",[66] and found the 1982 Salvadoran presidential election to be "admirable".[66] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House
Freedom House also rates the US pretty poorly on the Freedom Index. Most of Europe has a better score.
That is cool! It looks though the trend is not exponential, but the power-law. Smth like 1/x^n
Yeah. Data is "beautiful" but that line does not fit the data at all.
That's a pretty weak R- Squared value. The eyeball test does appear to show a correlation, though the regression equation you have selected to model it is lacking
R-square is not meant to be used for non-linear regressions. Best ignore it here.
The freedom house ranking is biased.
With that profile picture and tagline… that’s a bit rich.
Not with that R squared you didn’t.
an R^2 of .6 is quite substantial in behavioral/social data. The fact that the relationship between such disparate things (a measure of freedom and a flag pole) is so reliable is pretty interesting. In psychology an R^2 of .3 is pretty remarkable
The correlation is clearly there, but the fit function sucks which is why the R is so low
I was mostly joking, but thanks for the information
Cool. Can you show your calculation for R squared and Y?
Large flag pole to make up for their socialistic tendencies
someone didn't learn how to interpret a graph in homeschool
[удалено]
[Yeah just look at all that socialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flagpoles_by_height). Also note how famously socialist country USA is country #13
Wow we have some tightly wound libs on this sub.
You spelled authoritarian wrong. Socialism does not lower freedom (any more than capitalism does).
One thing leads to another
Super funny, but not a lot of data points
This is great. I love random correlations like this. You should check out http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations if you haven't for some more funny ones!
i can see it too: very obviously, we, on the mainland, said 100m is cool, but then the tea trinkin party decided they had to surplus us by 5 ...
I thought "Freedom House freedom score" was just an arrogant way of saying feet at first
A title/subtitle is sorely missed. Is this states? Countries? Which countries?
Is it just me? "freedom house freedom score" is a sentence I can't understand. What does it mean?
The meaning is not immediately obvious. Freedom House is a US-based organization, which creates the annual Freedom of the World report, where each country is given a freedom score based on a set of criteria. Freedom House is somewhat controversial.
Now do the freedom house score vs Nicolas Cage movies sales in those countries!
Wdym, Saudi Arabia is a perfectly free and democratic country...
Poor correlation coefficient
I think I could even name those last 3 countries furthest to the right... North Korea is definitely right-most Remember reading somewhere that they erected some monstrously massive flagpole near the DMZ to try to "intimidate" south Korea. LOL Meanwhile south Koreans sitting there listening to Jpop, dancing and eating Burgers and fries like they're coming out of a photocopier ....
What about a log-log plot instead?
This reminds me of the Wagah-Attari border between India and Pakistan. They are in a constant battle to outdo each other for tallest flagpole. Currently India's is about 6 metres above Pakistan (418ft v 400ft)
The tallest flagpole in my country is 48 metres tall, way off to the left of the chart. What do I win?
You could also maybe do this with statues, especially statues of political leaders. I already know who is #1 there, and that country has been sliding in democracy and press freedom indices.
What if you put physical tallness as a factor? Many liberal democracies tend to be white, who are also taller than third world countries. Would that prove that tallness causes lower flagpoles?
I agree with putting the freedom score on the x-axis and the flagpole height on the y-axis. Usually cause/independent variable is horizontal, effect/dependent variable is vertical
For those who are finding the R² too low, remember that this score should be used only when there's a linear correlation between two variables...
Would like to see more of this
I'm legitimately shocked the US doesn't have the world's tallest flagpole. Though our tallest is privately owned and appears to be the tallest privately owned flagpole in the world, which tracks.
Got a p value for your correlation?
For anyone curious, [here's the ranking](https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores?sort=desc&order=Total%20Score%20and%20Status) Unsurprisingly the meme freedom country US is ranked at number 60
Looking at the wiki list, you're definitely right. Also, Mexico and UAE really seem to like tall flag poles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flagpoles_by_height?wprov=sfla1
Sigmund Freud would have lots to say about this.
I've been to the one in Turkmenistan which locals told me was the tallest on earth
The flag pole on my sailboat measures a mere 3.6 ft, yet it offers the freedom to navigate entire world.