Junk Charts

Weekend reading

Lots of ideas from readers have been gathering dust in my mailbox. Here are a bunch of links, with a few comments of mine.

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This first link I'm not sure what to make of. I think the architects and graphic designers amongst you may be able to make sense of it. Not me. It came with this description: "dr. dr. crash and dr. trash of m-a-u-s-e-r
analyzed worlds most junk magazines and visualized their data." For the intrepid (and I claim no liability):

    "Jetistics: The Analysis of Junk. The Junk of Analysis?"

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This is yet another instance of the trend of infographics infiltrating PR releases.

This is yet another example of a map adding little or no value to the data. The presence of geographic data is not an excuse to give a lesson on maps.

It would be one thing if the geographic location helps the readers understand the data but in most such charts, the map merely says "Reader, I presume you are map illiterate, so let me tell you  South Africa is at the southern tip of the African continent..."

Also notice that the bar charts are sorted by average size of invoices, which is definitely less meaningful than total amount invoiced. This, I suspect, is the failure to ask the pertinent question, which is at the top of the Trifecta checkup.

  

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"19 Must-See Biotech Infographics", according to Kelly Davis of the BioBlogging Project.

  #2 on this list is a chart (rather old data) on GM food, an issue of concern to me. In the Trifecta checkup, this addresses an important question, and displays very relevant data but uses a poor chart... too many colors, colors not carrying any meaing, hard-to-read labels.

Of the other links, these are more interesting: #10, #12, #17, #19, #8, #9.

 

 

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This is meant as an art piece

Indeed, this set of maps produced by Doug Mccune (more here) using publicly available data released by the San Francisco government on its DataSF website is breathtakingly beautiful. Thanks to Rudy R for bringing this to our attention.

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Hate to spoil the fun but it has to be said that if we apply the Trifecta checkup, these maps fail at the first question: what is the practical issue being addressed?

As Doug noticed, there is a ridge along Mission Street that appears on pretty much every map regardless of the type of crime. The features on various maps are rather consistent as well -- and I can assure you that those features are consistent with population density.

Alas, if you live in San Francisco and care about crime there, Mission Street is not news. We don't need a sophisticated map to tell us that insight. Same with where prostitution is.

What if you are interested in crime in your local neighborhood? Not these maps either because in creating the relief, Doug must make approximations; the higher the peak, the more collateral activity is created around the peak to avoid discontinuities in the surface. This destroys the local details.

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Still, they are gorgeous to look at, and as Doug alluded to in his disclaimer, we just need to remove our junkcharts glasses to appreciate them.

Light entertainment: Pie chart plated

Thanks Julien D. for the pointer.

(Wheel of Nutrition by Rui Pereira and Hafsteinn Juliusson for HAF, more here).