Under Construction

Aggregate Data

A time-series plot of, for example, closing stock prices of the RIM corperation, gives full information about the behaviour of the stock.

Figures 10, 11, and 12 show bar charts which take averages of the closing price over the Calendar Year, the Canadian Fiscal Year (April-March), and the American Fiscal Year (October-September).

Figure 10. Closing price averaged over the calendar year.

Figure 11. Closing price averaged over the Canadian fiscal year.

Figure 12. Closing price averaged over the American fiscal year.

Of these three plots, Figure 12 appears to be the most damning, even if all of the data has the exact same source. In Figure 12, there is a spike close to $120; while in Figure 11, the stock appears to be significantly more stable—yes, there was a downturn, but it does not appear to be as significant as other corperations.

On the left are six bar charts from this site while on the right are bar charts showing the same data. Explain the differences.

Original	Alternative

Issues you may have noticed:

1. What are we comparing between? The tests or the operating systems? The first impression is that one colour or the other is better.
2. I personally cannot realistically compare the two—the last two as to determine which is better, Vista or Windows 7.
3. Why the pastel blue fountain-filled background with the pastel blue colour of the bar chart?
4. Why choose two colours that are reasonably close in the colour space?
5. Why repeate all the information about the set-up; consequently, requiring the actual platforms being tested to be written in miniscule font?
6. What is with using six-decimal digits of precision? Is their answer actually significant to a relative error of less than 0.00005 %?