Prometheus 6   

A no joke need to understand macroeconomics

I really have decided I need to have a good understanding of this.

Way too many decisions are made (or justified) based on macroeconomics for me to be sanguine about the state of my knowledge of the subject. I know enough history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, religion and current events to know when arguments in these area are substantial of specious. But just as neocons came in spouting centrst rhetoric, Capitalism-as-religion market moralists are using economic theory to support profiteering.

I spend an absurd amount of time considering an article I was referred to in the comments of a post on Crooked Timber. The problem came down to two graphs: each plotted the real GDP vs. the rate of change of the real GDP for various nations, but one used an area proportionate to each nation's population to represent each data point.

First my eyes crossed a bit because representing four dimensions of data (name, population, real GDP, rate of change of real GDP) in two dimensions is hard. I had to visualize a several three dimensional representations. I came to the conclusion that the population dimension added data but not information. It was essentially noise as presented. But I can't be sure there's not some information out there which would make sense of taking population into account in a macroeconomic-based argument. I really, really, doubt it but I can't write it off.

I've taken it on myself to write up these little editorial rants. It would behoove me to avoid obvious error in the process. So I need to learn.