Mackinac Center wins the award for worst use of a graph

As online news sites of all kinds embrace graphics, charts and interactive maps to visually draw in readers, some media outlets, such as Vox and The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, perform this task with consistent excellence.

Some others, not so much.

The Midland-based Mackinac Center may have produced the latest example of a graph that’s too small, too simple and, worst of all, a seeming contradiction to the text of the story.

The story was the latest installment in the Mackinac Center’s critique of Michigan’s tax credits for the film industry. But the graphic (above) seems to show that, shortly after film incentives were adopted in 2008, while the state’s economy was in the middle of a cliff-dive, film-related jobs in Michigan took off.
In 2009-11, while Michigan was struggling mighty to dig itself out of a hole created by a loss of nearly 1 million jobs over the previous decade, film jobs were one bright spot, according to the Mackinac graphic, which relies on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statics information.

While the raw numbers aren’t large, it appears from the graph that film jobs shot up by about 60 percent from 2009-11, from about 1,400 to roughly 2,250. The job levels held steady for a year and then dropped off as the tax credits were sharply curtailed.

Now, that’s a graph that would come in handy for a story about the need to restore the film credits. But here is what the text of the Mackinac Center piece, a guest column by a southern California professor, had to say:
A Senate Fiscal Agency report concluded that Michigan spent $37.5 and $100 million on tax credits in 2009 and 2010 to generate just $21.1 and $59.5 million, respectively, in production activity. In 2013, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation reported that film incentives created zero full-time jobs.

So, the graph is either an annoying contradiction for the reader or a piece of information that inadvertently tells another side of the story.

Yet, the Mackinac Center’s poor use of graphics pales in comparison to the botched job by Business Insider in trying create a map that demonstrates “the fastest-growing town in every state.”
One quick look at the map (below) immediately draws a curious response as it consists almost entirely of cities that virtually no one has ever heard mentioned: Lithopolis, Ohio; Pike Road, Alabama; Houston, Alaska.

Relying on recently released U.S. Census figures that show estimated population growth from 2013 to 2014, Business Insider’s map declared that the fastest-growing town in Michigan is Sylvan Lake in Oakland County. How’s that?
Well, the raw data shows that Sylvan Lake grew by 2.7 percent in one year. The problem is that the gain amounted to 47 people. The city went from 1,752 people to 1,799 people.  

To demonstrate just how misleading the “fastest-growing” distinction award to Sylvan Lake is, consider that my town, Macomb Township in Macomb County, posted a gain last years of 1,828 people – more than the entire population of Sylvan Lake. My township, in one year, managed to fit all of Sylvan Lake’s populace within our borders, plus a few dozen more.

Reporting on population changes is always a bit of a tricky business because small towns can post a small increase that looks large as a percentage. But the Business Insider map takes disparity to a whole new level. Nearly every town on the map saw an increase of less than 1,000 people last year yet the visual presentation, relying on percentages, presents a very different and very misleading picture.

Most readers surely tossed this information aside when they looked at the accompanying BI chart with the raw numbers. At the top of the list with a 48.9 percent increase in population is some place called Vineyard, Utah.

Never heard of it? That’s because Vineyard’s new population zenith stands at 691 people.