Sorting dot plots

As with box plots and bar plots, how you order the rows in a dot plot affects the kinds of questions that are easy to answer.

Here you can see the Big Mac Index: the price of a McDonalds Big Mac in various countries around the world (in Jan 2020). The "Actual price" is the price converted to US dollars. The "GDP adjusted price" has an additional correction for the gross domestic product of a country. Roughly, if people earn less in a country, it will cost more using the adjusted price.

By default, the rows in the dot plot are ordered alphabetically. This makes it really easy to look up the price for a specific country, but difficult to answer question about where the most expensive or least expensive Big Macs can be found. By sorting the rows by price, those questions are easier to answer.

Which statement is true?

Data source: The Economist

This exercise is part of the course

Understanding Data Visualization

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