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Wow. What do you even call those triangle and trapezoid thingies? Do they have a name in the graphic literature?
Posted by: ZBicyclist | Mar 03, 2009 at 03:34 PM
Well you might get a bit of those types in Excel "advanced feature" options...
I doubt though that anyone following information visualisation best in class recommandation would even consider using that approach...
The lack of scale both on company ranking on the "Reputation index" and on the frequency / impact of buzz (positive or negative regardless of the medium) doesn't help the reader in the slightest
Posted by: Bernard Lebelle | Mar 04, 2009 at 02:43 AM
ZBicyclist, in Excel terms it's just "area series". Strangely enough, the triangles at least have the virtue that their area is proportional to their height. The overlapping compromises even that, though.
Posted by: derek | Mar 04, 2009 at 09:47 AM
OK - I made the chart, and deserve everything that's been thrown at it. But - in my (lame) defense. I'm a physicist by training (Ph.D. even), so quantitative graphics are second nature. But this one was purposely meant to be a cartoon - first, because of the subject (peanut butter, pot and Pop Tarts), and second, because it was designed as a eye-catcher in a blogpost that explained quantitatively what was going on. So the chart alone (i.e. out of the blogpost context) is hard to understand.
As a chart, is it seriously ugly. As a cartoon, it worked, because it got us great coverage (from CNN Lou Dobbs to the Atlantic to PerezHilton).
Cheers,
Nick DiGiacomo
Co-founder, Vanno
and the guy who made the chart ;-)
Posted by: Nudger | Mar 04, 2009 at 01:38 PM