Little things

Reader Daniel sent us a great example of how even little things matter a lot in chart-making.  The left chart is the original.  The right chart (created by Daniel) shuffled the order of the legend to match the curves, and spaced them out.  All of a sudden, the chart is much easier to read.





Reference: "information behaviour of the researcher of the future", UCL, Jan 2008.

Comments

[Tony]

Such a small change results in a dramatic increase in effectiveness! I always try to label the lines when using a line graph versus using the default legend. Nice job!

[Hadley]

And how about getting rid of the misleading curves so we can see the data? Judging from the x-axis it looks like there are only 5 data points per line, but the curves make it look like the data density is much higher.

[Patrick]

Curved, connected line graphs = bad.

[Art]

There is no question that the labeling on the side makes a big difference in readability of these graphs...now how about taking a stab at making the data itself more readable...not just the label. Thanks for sharing...