What am I on about?

[ciphergoth]

Just calibrating my posts - here's a poll about my last post - if you haven't seen it yet, wait 'till you've stopped reading your friends list before you come back. I promise this poll has no wrong answers.

Update: I am overjoyed to learn that as of just now, no less than 14 people have some idea what I'm on about. That last chart is the most complex I've produced, I wasn't sure how to explain what it was and I was pretty sure I hadn't done a good job of it, so that even one other person gets it is really nice. All ideas on how to set out the meaning of that chart welcome.

[Poll #1185737]

Comments

Why, you've hit my subject area precisely!

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I think you could easily be getting a PhD in Political Science in the US.

That said I have a hard time understanding the bubble charts - the graph is much easier for me to understand.

[lovingboth]

In the bubbles, the size of the bubble shows how many electoral college votes the state has and the position shows who an average of recent polls show winning - the more towards the top left, the better placed Obama would be, the more to the bottom right, Clinton. The colour is blue - Dem regardless, Red - Rep regardless, yellow - it depends.

So Clinton would do much better than Obama in Kentucky (towards bottom right), but McCain would still win it (red).

[webcowgirl.livejournal.com]

I recognize that that is what it means intellectually, but there's something in my brain that can't parse the picture correctly. I have to tell myself the story of what it means but then the bubbles just turn into nothingness in my head.

[heptadecagram.livejournal.com]

The trick is to completely ignore one dimension. Just look left-to-right, and view it as "the amount to the left is how much the state goes for McCain, the amount to the left is how much it goes for Clinton", and ignore verticality. Then do the reverse McCain v. Obama.