Reporting statistics in the media

Today's front page Kuensel article, Where bullocks beat power tillers, described how in most Dzongkhags bullocks are still the main farming "technology". The article included a table that compared the percentage of households using bullocks, power tillers, bullocks and power tillers, and manual digging, broken down by Dzongkhag. Here is the table:

From Kuensel Newspaper (22 Nov, 2010)

While the table gives the exact percentages, it does not give the big picture, which was well described in the text. In such cases, as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words". I have reproduced the statistics in a set of Dzongkhag-level bar charts. Each bar color (grey, blue, green, yellow) corresponds to a farming "technology" (bullocks, power tillers, bullocks and power tillers, manual digging). You can now directly compare the 20 Dzongkhags (the scale is identical in all charts).

From this visualization it is easy to see that indeed, most Dzongkhags are dominated by the use of bullocks only. Bumthang, Gasa, Paro, Punakha,Thimphu, and Wangdue are the heaviest users of power tillers. And what about manual digging?

% of households using each of 4 farming technologies, by Dzongkhag

While the chart might not convey the exact percentages, it allows readers to quickly see the large picture and even the approximate percentages.