As light as Friday

Our readers are on a roll, here is another great submission.  Margaret can't say it any better:

Thought you might enjoy this infographic from The Guardian newspaper, which appears to describe how humans evolved from penguins

Source: "Prehistoric Penguin", Guardian (UK)

Comments

[zbicyclist]

Pretty funny. As a minor note, there's an unnecessary shift of scale here from cm to m.

Shown:
63cm
68cm
90cm
1.2m
1.5m
1.8m

Better?
63cm
68cm
90cm
120cm
150cm
180cm

or
.6m
.7m
.9m
1.2m
1.5m
1.8m

Or is there some metric convention I'm missing.

[derek]

Speaking of data graphics of giant flightless bird silhouettes, Mike Dickison of giantflightlessbirds.com has started blogging at Pictures of Numbers again after a hiatus, and gives tips on how to make your own silhouettes for data graphics.

The tips are for the expensive Adobe Illustrator, but I got similar results using the much cheaper photomanipulation software Paint Shop Pro. Excel can import either .eps or .wmf vector graphics into bubble charts for sizing, although getting the scaling right can be tricky.

[Clint]

You know, it's funny but I think that your reader's reaction, and the presumed confusion of this graphic has more to do with the viewers' state of mind than anything. I don't know if I was tipped off by reading the post in bloglines (sans image) or what, but I had no problem interpreting the graphic and wasn't forcibly reminded of the whole "ascent of man" type graphic by the graphic itself, the accompanying text was what made me think about the casual similarity...

[Kaiser]

zbicyclist: having grown up with the metric scale, I have to say this is an example of where it excels. Because of the simple 1:100 conversion, it really doesn't matter much the switch from centimeters to meters; the significant digits don't change. If it were inches and feet, then it's more of a problem.