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.
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.
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)
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
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
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. ;)
via Robert Benson's Blog
via Robert Benson's Blog
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