Americans Prefer Watered Down Beer

Posted Oct 2, 2007 to Economics by Nathan  /  2 responses

Beer Shipments in 2006Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser), Miller, and Coors lead the way in beer. Albeit, this is shipment data, not sales data, so take the numbers with a grain of salt.

The extreme dominance of the top three American beers was somewhat surprising to me, because I never see people order any of those three at restaurants. However, I gave it a few more seconds of thought. I'm thinking parties, sporting events, and drunken nights. The American beers go down easier (because they're like water), so it's easier to get drunk. To get drunk, people drink more. So I guess the watery dominance isn't that surprising. I guess when people buy beer for taste at restaurants, they look to different brands.

Anyhow, I'm really starting to become a fan of these bubble charts. They're really easy to read and can quickly spruce up a hard-to-read table of numbers. They also seem to scale decently. By well, I don't mean in like the thousands, but in the tens, I think the bubbles can hold their own.

What kind of beer do you prefer?


Replies

2 responses to "Americans Prefer Watered Down Beer"
  • Paul
    Oct 2, 2007, 10:07 am

    Not too sure if I like the bubble charts. The problem with that one is that if you just glance at the top two bubbles, it looks the the top one is about twice as large as the second one. When in fact the number is three times as large (about). I think humans have a problem comparing the relative sizes of areas versus the length of lines - I read that somewhere, where escapes me atm.


  • Bars as an Alternative to Bubble Charts
    Oct 22, 2007, 4:16 am

    […] any case, here is an alternative to the bubbles — bars. The beer data from a previous post are charted (2006 shipments on the left, and 2005 shipments on the right). The advantage of bars […]


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