That doesn’t matter in this graph because everything is using the same base value comparing to 100. It would only be a problem if different countries had different denominators
That assumes comparison across country is all that folks see in the graph; but one could also read this from a gender-wars kinda lens. From that perspective, this would inflate the apparent # of men per woman if one averages over countries.
For example, suppose we had 100 men and 100 women distributed in 2 countries. If we put 60 men with 40 women in country A and 40 men with 60 women in country B, this statistic would report:
A: 150 men : 100 women
B: 67 men : 100 women
And it would color the excess of men a darker blue than the excess of women (because one is +50 from 100, while the other is -33; note the spacing on their gradient). This would make it seem like there’s net more men than women, which is not true.
Oh yeah, I get what you mean now. Because of the way percentages work, it looks more impressive going up than going down; when comparing the percentages against each other. It would have been clearer to show % of population male vs female.
Using their numbers: Qatar being the most extreme in men-heavy, has 249.9 men per 100.0 women; which could instead be displayed as 71.4% men and 28.6% women.
Moldova being the most extreme women heavy, has 85.1 men per 100.0 women; which could instead be displayed as 46.0% men and 54.0% women.
If we take the median (most countries seem to have more women than men), Uganda has 98.5 men to 100.0 women; which instead could be written as 49.6% men and 50.4% women.
The site makes it look like men are going extinct in most places, and are extremely disproportionality clustered around certain locations; when reality is not that extreme. A 0.8% population gender swing in the median country isn’t an interesting article, though; so I get why they presented it in this way.
That doesn’t matter in this graph because everything is using the same base value comparing to 100. It would only be a problem if different countries had different denominators
That assumes comparison across country is all that folks see in the graph; but one could also read this from a gender-wars kinda lens. From that perspective, this would inflate the apparent # of men per woman if one averages over countries.
For example, suppose we had 100 men and 100 women distributed in 2 countries. If we put 60 men with 40 women in country A and 40 men with 60 women in country B, this statistic would report: A: 150 men : 100 women B: 67 men : 100 women
And it would color the excess of men a darker blue than the excess of women (because one is +50 from 100, while the other is -33; note the spacing on their gradient). This would make it seem like there’s net more men than women, which is not true.
Oh yeah, I get what you mean now. Because of the way percentages work, it looks more impressive going up than going down; when comparing the percentages against each other. It would have been clearer to show % of population male vs female.
Using their numbers: Qatar being the most extreme in men-heavy, has 249.9 men per 100.0 women; which could instead be displayed as 71.4% men and 28.6% women.
Moldova being the most extreme women heavy, has 85.1 men per 100.0 women; which could instead be displayed as 46.0% men and 54.0% women.
If we take the median (most countries seem to have more women than men), Uganda has 98.5 men to 100.0 women; which instead could be written as 49.6% men and 50.4% women.
The site makes it look like men are going extinct in most places, and are extremely disproportionality clustered around certain locations; when reality is not that extreme. A 0.8% population gender swing in the median country isn’t an interesting article, though; so I get why they presented it in this way.