History Shots Website

Ivo, a reader, sent me to this interesting site: History Shots.  It sells prints of visualizations of complex time-series data in a variety of topics, including this chart of PGA players:

It is hard to judge the success of these charts as we are not allowed to see the details.  They certainly provide a feast to the eye.  The inspiration to these charts is undoubtedly Minard's Napoleon chart, so praised by Tufte and others (see, for example, here).

In general, dense charts of this type service specialists really well but will  likely confound the general public.  The reader must spend time to learn the chart features before understanding the data.

Comments

[Nick Barrowman]

They do have a zoom-in feature, so you can have a closer look.

The reader must spend time to learn the chart features before understanding the data.

On a bit of a side point, it's interesting how resistant most people are to taking the time!

I guess the common view is that graphics should be instantly understandable. (I know I've read this observation somewhere else; perhaps Cleveland or Tufte?) But this is so limiting. And I think it's part of what leads to the plethora of stupid bar charts. Not that all bar charts are stupid (just most of them).

[Mike]

That sounds like something from Cleveland, and while you're right saying in that it can be used as an excuse to be lazy, hoepfully it just encourages graph-makers to keep the user in mind!