Junk Charts

Finding meaning in Big Blue California

Via Twitter, Pat complained that this Bloomberg graphic is confusing:

The accompanying article is here. The gist of the report is that electric cars are much more popular on the West coast because the fuel efficiency of such cars goes down dramatically in colder climates. (Well, there are political reasons too, also discussed in the article.)

What makes this chart confusing?

Our eyes are drawn to big blue California, and the big number 25,295. The blue block raises three questions: first, how do we interpret that 25,295 number? How big is it? To what should we compare the number? Second, we notice a blending of labels--California is the only label of a state while all other labels are of regions. Third, the number under West is 31,783, even larger than 25,295 although it gets a smaller font size, a black-and-white treatment, and a seemingly small allocation of space.

It takes a little time to figure out the structure of the graphic. That the baseline is a treemap with the regions, and big blue California is a highlight that sits within the West region.

Tufte would not love the "moivremoire"  patterns, nor do I. I'd have left the background of the entire right side plain white.

I fail to see why this treemap form is preferred to a simple bar chart.

***

As I play around with the data, basically playing with stacking the data, I found a way to make a more engaging graphic. This new graphic builds off an insight from this data: that the number of electric cars sold in California is more than all other states combined. So here you go:

Since the article attributes the gap in sales to regional temperature, an even better illustration should bring in temperature data.

 

Putting a final touch on Bloomberg's terrific chart of social movements

My friend Rhonda D. wins a prize for submitting a good chart. This is Bloomberg's take on the current Supreme Court case on gay marriage (link). Their designer places this movement in the context of prior social movements such as women's suffrage and inter-racial marriage.

Previously, I mentioned New York Times' coverage using "tile maps." While the Times places geography front and center, Bloomberg prefers to highlight the time scale. (In the bottom section of Bloomberg's presentation, they use tile maps as well.)

These are the little things I love about the graphic shown above:

• The very long time horizon really allows us to see our own lifetime as a small section of the history of the nation
• The gray upper envelope showing the size of the union is essential background data presented subtly
• The inclusion of "prohibition" representing a movement that failed (I wish they had included more examples of movements that do not succeed)
• The open circle and arrow indicators to differentiate between ongoing and settled issues

They should have let the movements finish by connecting the open circles to the upper envelope. Like this:

This makes the steepness of the lines jump out even more. In addition, it makes a distinction between the movements that succeeded and the movement that failed. (Prohibition was repealed in 1933. The line between 1920 and 1933 could be more granular if such data are available.)