I found the giant line graph problematic because of the hand waving they did to normalize when the breaks occurred during the day. It also disturbs me to see such large, high frequency variation in a line that is averaging a large number of events without explanation.
The dataset certainly begs for a better analysis. For instance, from the supporting material, is there really a judge (the 'X' marker) the never granted parole to the last three people before his morning snack, but granted 70% for the first three of the day on average? All year, for a significant number of cases? Did no one notice that the people before snack time were not getting due process?
The work itself is behind a paywall, but you can read some of the supporting material at http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2011/03/30/1018033108.DCSu... to get an idea.
I found the giant line graph problematic because of the hand waving they did to normalize when the breaks occurred during the day. It also disturbs me to see such large, high frequency variation in a line that is averaging a large number of events without explanation.
The dataset certainly begs for a better analysis. For instance, from the supporting material, is there really a judge (the 'X' marker) the never granted parole to the last three people before his morning snack, but granted 70% for the first three of the day on average? All year, for a significant number of cases? Did no one notice that the people before snack time were not getting due process?