How do people in different countries spend their time? | Hacker News Reader

How do people in different countries spend their time?

economist.com

95 pointsnopinsight20 comments

Fascinating statistics. I wish the charts had been designed in a way that made it easier to compare the numbers: for instance, I want to visually compare the number of hours that each country spends sleeping, but these charts force me to read the numbers instead of interpreting the graphics.

Pie charts are mostly useless...

I really don't see any reason for their usage here, except of their resemblance to the shape of the sun (and analog clock).

Agreed --- looks like the rankings of the variables are the same for each country, and even the ratios vary only slightly. This information would be better presented in a table (with standard error reported) or a bar graph. The original OECD[1] report presents this information much more lucidly. When The Economist filtered the OED report, they should have paid more attention to clarity of presentation.

[1] http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_34637_2671576...

If only the world would stop using pie charts. They are inherently broken. http://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/please-dont-use-pie-charts.html

A classic example of a poor choice of visualisation. Pie and donuts aren't always useless but they're very awkward to interpret here.

I made a quick'n'dirty replacement using a stacked column chart if anyone is interested:

https://demo.geckoboard.com/dashboard/CF6225A8BF97972D/

Better, but still hard to read, I think. If I want to compare the green bars for two countries, they don't sit side by side, because the sections under them are of varying heights.

I think this would be more ideal:

Country 1 Work :XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (X%)

Country 2 Work :XXXXXXXXXXXXX (X%)

Country 1 Sleep:XXXXXXXXXXXXXX (X%)

Country 2 Sleep:XXXXXXXXXXXX (X%)

OK, I've added detail charts - one for each metric - so you can easily compare metrics for each country side-by-side.

Among other complaints (pie charts?), it seems odd that "eating / sleeping" are combined. Seeing each individually would be far more useful.

The actual report (not the Economist summary) has better graphs and more info, though - perhaps that should have been linked instead?

I can't support this enough. The economist's summary had me just saying "so what", but after reading this comment I started looking at the actual report and I must say it is much much more interesting.

http://www.oecd.org/document/24/0,3343,en_2649_34637_2671576...

Primary sources are usually worth seeking out, anyway.

Yes definitely. But in this case just looking at the Economist's summary, I didn't even feel it was interesting or worthwhile to look at the primary source.

They all look mostly the same, sure the French spend nearly double the time on "Personal Care" as Americans but when you're talking about 0.7 hours vs. 1.3 hours that's really not a big difference. I'd be a lot more interested in countries like Russia, China, and various places in the Middle East, Africa, and South America. More precise age groups would also be interesting.

I think the number on "Paid work and study" had quite significant differences (Japan 6.3, Germany 3.9 (which is less than France and surprisingly low)) and was very interesting.

But I definitely agree that numbers from a more diverse country sample could be very interesting.

"I think the number on "Paid work and study" had quite significant differences"

It could simply mean that in Japan a higher percentage of people have paid work compared to the other countries, like children work earlier, old people die sooner after employment ends (in France many retire in their 50s), higher percentage of employed women, less unemployment etc. pp.

Not very useful data.

Germany has (or had) a system where you could work 3 days and get paid for 3.5 days. The government chipped in the extra, I believe.

I think the idea was to encourage more part-time workers so the unemployment rate would drop. And for a couple intending to have a single member working, it would encourage both to work part-time instead.

What exactly is "Other", and why does Germany do it so much more than other countries?

Conquering other countries.

More seriously, I can imagine it includes travel to work, which tends to be an epic journey through traffic jams in densely populated countries like Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands.

Then again, my experience of living both in the US and Germany is that driving plays by far a greater role in the US. Most places are 20-45 min away. In Germany, things like grocery stores, theaters, schools or restaurants tend to be closer to residential areas.

Lumping in information gathered about people spanning such an enormous age range (15 through 64) is a bit curious.

How does the 'paid work' part relate to the average salaries in these countries?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com