Check out this interactive infographic published by the Wall Street Journal. It's well worth it: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703465204575208412972387390.html
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Misleading Graphs
Sociological Images has a guest post today about how data presented in graphs can be misleading to the unobservant viewer. Take this graph for example, which supposedly correlates lower GPAs with increased alcohol consumption among undergraduates.
The trend looks pretty damning indeed until you realize that the y-axis only ranges from 3.0 to 3.5, which means the difference between a student who consumes zero drinks of alcohol per week and those who have 6+ drinks a week is far less than a full letter grade. At that point you kind of have to wonder if you can even really call it a trend anymore. I for one don't really have much faith in GPAs as an indicator of intelligence or performance because of the wide-spread proliferation of grade inflation (or maybe I'm just bitter because most of my engineering classes were curved to a C average, which honestly is as it should be).
Anyways, check out more examples in the full post.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
American Military Strategy and PowerPoint
Oh, PowerPoint, how we love to hate you. So much so that the New York Times wrote an entire article about its shortcomings. The original poster-child for horrible PowerPoint slides used to be the slide that supposedly contributed to the Columbia disaster (you can get a good breakdown of the notorious slide and the weakness of PowerPoint that is demonstrates here), but now the latest piece of evidence stacked against PowerPoint is a diagram illustrating American military strategy in Afghanistan.
If the intention of the artist was to demonstrate its complexity, then they've definitely succeeded. But if the diagram was actually intended to be a useful tool for discussion and planning then it utterly fails. Ultimately, the article isn't about this diagram at all but how PowerPoint tends to oversimplify complex and difficult concepts into rigid bullet point lists.
See the full New York Times article for more details.
Monday, April 26, 2010
When to Use Small Multiples
Juice Analytics has put up a nice article about how and when to use small multiples, which are ways to use the same chart format to display multi-dimensional data across multiple sample sets.
Full article here (via Chart Porn)
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The Trustworthiness of Beards
If only Captain Cook's mustache were included in this chart. He'd definitely qualify as "threatening" at the very least.
via Geekologie
Venn Diagram of Prime Time TV 2010
This infographic makes me feel better about not having time to watch TV anymore.
via Fast Company
Photographer's Life in Graph
Hilarious, but I'll have you know that I believe shooting flowers and cats can be acceptably shot at any point in time on that graph. ;)
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Food Charts
Today is all about food, mainly because I was hungry while surfing the web today. But anyways, first up today is a nice infographic by NGF about how much salt is contained in various common foods we eat. Love the use of color and the play on salt piles and texture to add some fun depth to it all. And who knew that cutting our salt intake in half could save 150,000 lives a year?
Full article here (via Chart Porn)
Speaking of food intake, the New York times had an article in its business section about how commercialized, processed foods have begun to completely dominant the average American diet. What's interesting about the breakdown of different countries' food intake is how much baked goods Mexico each, how many veggies China eats and how incredibly little India eats in general.
Full NYTimes article here.
Monday, April 12, 2010
Why Use an Infographic?
Infographic Showcase responds with the following: "Because they provide a moment of visual stimulation (even if we are over stimulated), allowing our more creative thoughts to open new pathways of thought and increasing our consciousness and self-awareness. Or, because we are a lazy culture and we like pretty pictures. I’m good either way."
I agree wholeheartedly.
via (Infographic Showcase)
Friday, April 9, 2010
Infographic on Making Infographics
So true, although I think the percentage dedicated to organizing and legibility should probably be higher.
Average College Student's Budget
Ahh this chart brings me back to the good ol' days of college. Was it really almost 4 years ago? Eek!
Solar System
After a long hiatus I've finally put together another poster, this time of the planets of the solar system (you can imagine the debate I had with people about whether or not to include Pluto, but ultimately it came down to aesthetics because you could barely see it to scale compared to the other planets. Poor Pluto....). The original concept design was supposed to include almost all of the moons next to their respective planets, but since I really wanted everything to be to scale, I decided to take them out since the vast majority of the moons would simply be tiny specs. There were even a few occasions where I mistook a couple for dust on my screen. So I decided to keep it very clean and very simple, with a little color to distinguish the rockier, warmer inner planets and brighten up what is predominantly a gray poster. Hope you guys like it!
(Full poster via Zazzle)
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Diagram Pillows
Designer Heather Lin has created some nifty pillows based on textbook diagrams. They come in three themes: geology, botany and biology. So cute! :)
Heather Lins Home (via Boing Boing)
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Maps in Modern Web Design
Smashing Magazine has written up an article discussing the fundamentals of online maps and how interactivity allows the designer to forgo traditional map staples such as legends if you do it right. In their own words:
"The expansion of Web technology over the past decade has opened a number of doors to presenting data online. One of the most rapidly improving tools for interactive presentation is the map."
"Interactive maps on the Internet present data most effectively when they invite action from the user. Showing relationships between data is easier when the user has the power to change the visuals. These are advantages that traditional print maps do not have. If a print map is not clear initially, a person can do very little to make sense of it. With online interactive maps, the simple action of moving sliders around reveals relationships between data and content."
Here are some of the more nifty examples of different map navigation styles they provide:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/election/uscounties.html
http://awesome.good.is/ecosystem/#/home
Check out the full Smashing Magazine article!
Monday, April 5, 2010
Different Depictions of the Same Data
Going through the blogs, I noticed an interesting pattern this morning. Over at Information is Beautiful, there was an infographic comparing the size of different countries' militaries. Specifically, it showed the number of active soldiers per 100,000 people of several respective countries. In this infographic, North Korea is huge, with 4,711 active soldiers per citizen. In this light, the U.S.'s military seems pretty small, in 45th place, and China's is even smaller, at 124th place.
This other infographic, from Chart Porn, declares that North Korea has 1.1 million. Even though that's the smallest nominal-size military on the chart, it's put up in huge red highlights above the other countries listed. Nominally, China is now the biggest military in the world and the U.S. is number 2.
http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/the-craziest-country-in-the-world/
Both charts try to emphasize North Korea's huge military with respect to its population and GDP, but go about it very differently. Personally, despite the use of area to represent 1-dimensional data, the first chart is much better at showing just how ridiculous North Korea's military is compared to the actual size and resources of the country, whereas in the second chart you have to look all over the place to piece together the full picture, and the nominal rankings of the countries is confusing when looked at separately from the rest of the infographic.
Taxi Hot Spots in New York City
The New York Times has put out another awesome infographic, this time tracking the average number of pickups at different times of the day over different days of the week. It creates a very interesting pattern that really shows the rush and flow of the city.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/04/02/nyregion/taxi-map.html
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