Supplement that alphabetized display with another graph showing the states in a more informative order.

I just wrote a long post inspired by a recent post from economist Paul Krugman. Krugman’s post was good, but I’m annoyed that his graph (reproduced above) lists the states alphabetically. Don’t do that! It’s called the Alabama first error.

I would’ve put this as a P.S. on my earlier post but I was afraid that would distract people from my larger point, so I’m just raising the graphical issue here.

If the goal is to have a look-up table, then, sure, alphabetical is fine. But I don’t think that’s the point of that graph. Indeed, if you wanted a look-up table, I’d still prefer a non-alphabetical graph and then you could click to get the numbers in a spreadsheet.

How best to order the states in that graph, then? You could try different things. My first idea is to list in order of average per-capita income by state. (These rankings don’t change much over time; for clarity we could just order by average per-capita income in 2020.)

P.S. All the commenters so far are disagreeing with me, so let me reassess.

I doubt that most readers are looking at this graph to look up individual states. I think the goal is to present the general trend and variation across U.S. states. For this purpose, alphabetical order makes it hard to see systematic patterns that might be clearer using any reasonable ordering.

That said, alphabetical order has the benefit of familiarity, and given that all of you think this is important, I’m willing to believe that my take is a minority view, and maybe the designer of the graph is better off going with the majority.

So I’ll alter my recommendation. Instead of saying, “Don’t alphabetize,” I’ll say, “Supplement with another graph showing the states in a more informative order.”