Very cool - but it does commit the "illustrating numbers with graphics" fallacy of scaling an area when what is being represented is a linear relationship.

Heh, cool to see my video on here.

You're right, delosgatos, and the point at which I began scaling from (the high point) was also picked arbitrarily (there is a note in the YouTube comments). This serves to show that charts and figures are useless without dialogue (i.e. the MSNBC buffoons pointing at their little chart and screaming "LOOK WHAT OBAMA DID" without actually discussing how we got where we are).

Adding--
A better point to take from the video would be counting the number of seconds in which the background is blue as opposed to red.

>>>- but it does commit the "illustrating numbers with graphics" fallacy of scaling an area when what is being represented is a linear relationship.

I'm a little confused as to what this means. Anyone want to come through with a helpful explanation, and possibly some illustrative examples?

ElMystico: The change in the DOW is a single parameter change, which is illustrated in the video by changing both the width and height of the text. If the single parameter decreases to 1/2 its original value the height and width are both halved, which means the area (which is what registers visually) decreases to 1/4 its original value.

Kyle: I agree about the point being the duration of blue vs. red. I think it would be cool to do a version where you just scale the height, and also leave BUSH up and add OBAMA, so that at the end it also shows the relative amounts of decrease in each.

Here's further discussion of the linear versus quadratic point, from a more serious case of abuse:

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2009/02/financial_morons_and_quadratic.php

@delosgatos: That was originally my plan (minus doing just the height--I completely failed to see the problem with scaling two parameters when talking about one value) but I was so happy when I finally got my After Effects expressions working that I went ahead and rendered the video as it was.

On the topic of numbers, there is an additional fallacy present when using percentages to talk about the DJIA as well.

The size of the presidents' names in this video are scaled by percentage. In the first frame, Bush's name is at 100% of its original size; in the last frame, Obama's name is at 47% of the text's original size. I calculated the percentage as:

x = 100(y/14,093.08)

Where x is the percentage used and y is that day's DJIA close.

But where did I come up with y? Other than being the highest closing value of the DJIA, the number is meaningless. 14,093.08 is not 100% of the DJIA; it's an arbitrary number.

I could have used:
x = 100([z-y]/y)
Where x is the percentage, z is the DJIA close for the specific day, and y is the difference between the record high and current low. Obama's name would have damn near disappeared.

Numbers never lie. People who use numbers often do.

Great clip.

Despite the "illustrating numbers with graphics fallacy" issue, I still put it on the front page of Shitheadery.com - it's not as if accuracy and math were highly regarded skills over the last eight years any who.

Great job, Kyle! I knew there was some After Effects expression nerdiness happening there!

The Stock Market is forward looking, not backward looking. What's happening today is no indicator of the Bush years. Sorry, but that is the way it works. What happened a year ago, or in September...that was Bush.

What's happening now is the market is responding to circumstances, and people are trying to predict the future. It's unpredictable, and at times, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nevertheless, the market DOES look forward. People ARE voting with their investments. That doesn't mean they are right. This isn't a judgment on Obama. It's a reaction to uncertainty, because people don't know how our economy will recover.

Sadly, neither does Geithner. That, of course, does not help. The market NEVER responds well to uncertainty.

How many people here are CERTAIN the economy will recover this year?

@Lee: Thanks! My inner AE-nerd shines through. Also, the weird hiphop music in the background--mine as well!

@ppp: What's happening today may not be a direct reaction to the Bush years, but it certainly is a result of them.

"What's happening now is the market is responding to circumstances, and people are trying to predict the future. It's unpredictable, and at times, a self-fulfilling prophecy."

So, can someone tell me why we put so much, er, stock into these indicators? Why do we bet everything on scientific wild ass guessing? I get the sense that we're actually basing everything off of speculators (who sound like a mysterious X-Files Consortium type of group.) Shouldn't some of these high-stakes investors take a hit off of some personal savings and invest rather than take the country down with them?

I admit, freely, that my Economics knowledge consists of the following: TINSTAAFL.

Jenski,

The speculators ARE taking massive hits on their personal accounts. Any decent Mutual Fund Manager has the largest portion of his personal investable assets in the funds he manages.

The market is largely a psychological animal. So is the economy. Consumer confidence is an indicator based almost completely on psychology.

Having said that, you can't legislate psychology out of the market, it's impossible. People cannot be told what stocks or bonds, or government securities to buy. There are moderately accurate (tongue in cheek) indicators that can help individual investors choose wisely, but all hell breaks loose when confidence is out the window. People sell stocks because they believe that stock's price will fall. They buy stocks when they believe a stock's price will rise. In this current situation, we've cycled through that little psychological exercise three or four times already.

Thanks PPP.

Based on what you said, then damn the media for consistently telling us the sky is falling.

(Hell, damn it anyway.)

PPP you are a sell out.Plain and simple.

"The market" as an entity, though, is comprised largely of the herd-pattern of movement of the Spazzy White Guys(TM) that have, in large part, been responsible over the past 12 or so years for creating this increasingly abstracted and un-real set of "wealth growth" dynamics where only wealth on paper has grown for select few.

It seems to me that the Madoff stuff was able to go for so long not only because of deregulation and lax enforcement, but because it was not so far removed from what passes for SOP. In his case, it was more direct and straightforward of an unsupportable scheme. But it really seems to be very little different than the legal swindling of the credit-default-swaps that "created" vast profits where none actually had any chance of ever coming to exist.

In short, "the market" is, at present at least (and the portion of "the market" represented by the DJIA) a macrocosm comprised of many microcosms of irrational douchebags trying to do magic math to make 2 equal 4. Or so it seems, at least, to my uneducated perspective.

I'm just glad we did what everyone advised us NOT to do, withdrawing our 401Ks and cashing out, despite penalties, to fix our credit debt and provide a down payment on our house two years ago.

If we left it in, we'd have lost much more than the penalties for early withdrawl, and never have been able to move out of (or sell!) our small condo.

That was awesome Kyle. Pure brilliance!!! You will be a star on the Indie film circuit, I read it in the tea leaves that I dumped on my Senator's sidewalk.