The submitted article includes one section that begins, "Ever heard of the data-to-ink ratio? If so, skip this." But please don't skip that. That is an excellent visual illustration of how to remove "chartjunk" (Tufte's term) from a data graphic, vividly showing how much a chart can be improved by being simplified.
Cute captioned photos are a dime a dozen, especially since websites for producing them for free popped up to feed some people's Facebook walls. Don't bother. Use a diagram when it really illustrates something, and write clearly the rest of the time. One of the strengths of the discussion on Hacker News is paragraphs of actual thoughtful text.
Yup, i thought the animation was brilliant. Pretty much summed the blog post. The equivalent in HN is the wall of text - breaking down the message into paragraphs, and keeping the content crisp makes posts/comments a lot more readable.
In fact, wouldn't data-to-ink ratio apply even for text?
I had pretty much the same reaction. Yeah, definitely remove backgrounds and shadows and anything that's redundant. That's great, the original was awful, but they took the minimization too far. What they ended up with was missing information and IMO wasn't as nice to look at as some of the intermediate forms had been either.
The one part that's really tricky is color. I actually liked the colored version a bit better, even though it provided no extra information content. Sure, if you want to use color for only one value (bacon) as a highlight that makes sense, but more generally I think a little bit of appropriate color can help maintain attention.
Much worse? or more in line with what most readers want: simplicity?
The 3 significant digits is the raw full-precision data, if you want to do more with the graph than get a brief impression. This in contrast to having to infer an approximation by following lines to a coarse axis and visually interpolating the desired values. Providing this data obviates objections #2 & #3.
Don't let the tickmarks, there or not, distract you from the zero. A favored lie in statistics is to conceal the lack (or off-the-chart) of zero, betting that the reader won't notice it having been dazzled by the dramatic angles on what (in many cases) is a rather flat data set. Default assumption should be the origin IS zero; if you're hiding the zero, ask yourself if you're really trying to lie to the reader. Marking the origin may provide plausible deniability, but most readers won't notice it - so act on truth, rather than concealing the lie in plain sight.
Comparison should be as natural as the context & form of the graph makes appropriate. If it's not suitably obvious, reconsider the graph type. If the reader wants more accuracy, a graph may not be the best medium - and golly there's the raw data.
The context should make the axis labels obvious and redundant. If it's not already obvious, reconsider whether the title or other commentary can be reworded to make it obvious.
Of course, all this depends on what you're really trying to tell the reader, and what form follows that function. If tick marks or labels or origin value is necessary, include it ... but whatever isn't necessary, drop it.
I hate to be the one to bring this up, but the contrast between your body font color (and even heading font) and background is downright horrible. It could also be how the font is being rendered, it looks thin and broken up.
For example the "t's" and "r's" and "l's" in the following sidebar text are almost invisible: "The data that makes your business tick is never more convincing than when it's put in context inside a story"
With Adblock it didn't even load the CSSs. And I might say, reading it in the default font over a white page improved the readability a lot.
Maybe they should apply their own recomendations and reduce "CSS junk" on their site. ;)
One reason he gives is that there is too much data on the page. Tufte has said having a lot of data isnt the problem (humans are excellent at scanning images), terrible design is the problem.
Since I suck at design though I tend to need to do simpler charts. :)
I personally find vudlab's charts pretty cool. I first came across them in the Simpson's paradox article[1] and i really loved them because they let me EXPLORE the data. Yep, they're interactive! That gives a whole new prespective to the readers.
d3's interactivity > excel and tableau in terms of quality data visualization.
anytime someone looks at a chart, they should be able to ask "but what happen's when x, y and z change?" being able to manipulate the data without forcing the audience to run calculations themselves should be the norm. it takes work, but i hope we get there someday.
The article appears to be a little confused on the historical use of words like chart and graph, so I wouldn't take anything they say seriously on that part. It's just a catchy introduction, presumably.
I'm referring to the actual use of those words in the business everyday life to refer to a business 'chart', not to the use of those words in general. Of course the words "graph", "chart" or "data visualization" did not suddenly pop up at specific moment in the recent history. In your analytics, "graph" might relate to graph theory, linguistic, or music.
It struck me that the post on why we hate infographics vs. the product the company puts out (visualisations of various data sources) was a bit of a non sequitur but the product does seems interesting and I'll probably give it a go.
A bit more on the actual topic of infographics (vs just data visualisation) would be a company that also "hates" them, but is putting out a tool that helps people build "living infographics". They're like the normal infographics we see, but they aren't static and you can actually interact and manipulate the data which turns them into both a marketing tool (outbound) and a market research tool (inbound).
Given the vast amount of junky infographics, I generally agree with their philosophy. They do, however, seem to ignore some of the research on the value of chartjunk. Like this paper, which won a best paper award at CHI '10: http://hci.usask.ca/publications/view.php?id=173
I'm inclined to believe their findings, in the same way that I'd agree putting a picture of Miley Cyrus as the lead art for a story about unemployment rates would make you notice and remember that one story more than other unemployment rate stories.
Quick question on the paper's methodology...is 20 a big enough sample size?
They link to an infographic on fuel sources and energy use from loveinfographics.com. Then they ask you to look at it for 10 seconds and ask they ask what you have learned.
I might as well ask people (who don't speak Chinese) to run the author's article through Bablefish English > Chinese, remove all images, then read "Why We Hate Infographics" article carefully and tell what they learned. It would, of course, be a useless article, but that does not reflect badly on the article: it was never intended to be consumed that way!
The infographic they link to is the kind of infographic that I find extremely valuable (and also quite difficult to create). A diagram which conveys a VERY significant amount of information in a very concise format. Looking at that graphic I can glean the following facts:
* Gas and oil make up a little more than half of US fuel supplies.
* Electricity is used roughly equally by residential, commercial, and industrial clients (well, slightly less for industrial).
* I heat my home with fuel oil. Apparently I'm a minority in that, but not by an extreme amount: we fuel oil users make up maybe 5% of the usage (not the population).
None of that information was a specific detail that the chart authors wanted to convey, so using less detailed methods would never have conveyed the information. A series of charts with numbers could have conveyed the information, but not in a form I could have processed with my brain (unless maybe I used it to build a chart like this).
I want to defend complex data visualizations that convey large amounts of information in easily perceived ways. I still think the "infographics" that just just illustrate things with pretty pictures are stupid.
Ref: the simplify point. The famous (via Tufte) graphic of Napoleon's invasion of Russia (http://www.improving-visualisation.org/vis/id=205) is widely cited as as a great example of conveying information useful and dramatically. If you accept this as an exemplar--you don't have to of course--it's anything but simple. Rather, it's a graphic that requires study but, given that study, offers up a great deal of information in return.
Hey! I get your point but complex data visualizations that convey large amounts of information suffer a bias: they are overly complex by condensating too much information, and very often they do so to look obtuse and expert (and thus cool).
Our point is that this pieces information could easily have been conveyed in separate simple charts, conveying each of the *data_points you quote one chart at a time.
You can understand this type of chart because you can take the time and the effort to work on the comprehension of it. And you're interested. We think it's a segregating way to convey information, leaving on the side of the road people who could have benefitted of the message were it explained in a simpler purer format.
Choose your audience. If you're aiming for quick impact your point stands, but if you want to convey maximum information in a usable form that infographic is excellent.
The really simple infographic of the MS/Nokia purchase actually makes no point at all; of course the WinPho marketshare figure is a reasonable proxy for the Nokia marketshare figure, so if one is small the other will be too.
The sad thing is that I absolutely agree with your basic message, but your examples are off.
I get the point, but here you're blaming us for choosing a simple infographic which chose an approximation you personnally disagree with. You're blaming the content, but the method of representation is not off in and of itself. This infographic make tons of sense I think at underlining how much of an uphill battle MS/Nokia are facing in the mobile world. But that's not the point of the example.
Conveying information in charts is more efficient and quicker (and can lead, yes, sometimes, to data abuse), than using cabalistic data visualizations for the sake of Adobe Illustrator that obscure the clarity of the message by adding density to it. We believe that is not a good way to carry data for maximum impact to your audience, whoever that is.
Its like an finding an encyclopedia, when a picture normally presents an idea. The OP criticized your graphic for having too much and no clear main idea. That part was true.
I loved the post but I agree that the energy infographic was a bad example to use because it's one of my favourite infographics. I have referred to versions of it often and find it very good at expressing some of the points I want to study or talk about.
I hate infographics. Although I understand the need for an overview of a subject, I don't think it's a substitute for a meaty body of text. I feel that anytime a subject is processed and homogenized into a one page graphic that I'm selling myself short. They remind me of "talking points" you see on the "news". I'd rather just read a body of text and then give myself some leeway to discover more about the topic in my own way. I have the patience and willpower to truly discover some truths, instead of parroting a factoid from an infographic. I do like how they are being used to draw people into a topic, and I do understand how data scientists are redefining visualization, I just don't like to see a ton of them for no reason other than being trendy.
Article misses the point of modern infographics, since back in the original Digg days they've just been carefully manufactured spam designed to suck up idiots, backlinks and traffic on social news sites.
To the OP - nice points well condensed. Would love to see what your company does in more detail but it looks like your site's down - guessing traffic related from this post!
There is really only one reason I hate infographics. I can't do them. If I had a fraction of the skill displayed at xkcd or the like, I would love them. :)
Getting pretty tired of all these posts that are telling me what I should hate. It's just infographics. They're not a substitute for hard core analytics and they're not supposed to be. It's a designers spin on providing summary level data that sits somewhere between the words of design and analysis. If you want a quickly digestible, publishable bit of content, use infographics. If you want to provide more meat to your message, don't use them.
Infographics sacrifice accuracy i.e. proportions, colors etc in favor of emotional appeal. Sometimes facts need to be packaged better for a greater impact. That's why they are primarily used for promotional rather than for reporting purposes.
> Infographics sacrifice accuracy i.e. proportions, colors etc in favor of emotional appeal. Sometimes facts need to be packaged better for a greater impact. That's why they are primarily used for promotional rather than for reporting purposes.
I think you have that backwards; "infographics" aren't really "information" + "graphics" but more like "infomercial" + "graphics", which is why they sacrifice accuracy -- or more generally effective communication of factual information, of which accuracy is a part -- in favor of emotional appeal.
The choices that involve tradeoff of accuracy, etc., don't precede determination of the purpose.
I take issue with your auto-discounting information presented in infographics. Infographics is a tool for conveying a message AND optimize for viral spread of this message. That is the reason for infographics to appeal to emotions, not necessarily to sell something. Infographics are used by all kinds of nonprofits, see http://www.good.is/infographics
> I take issue with your auto-discounting information presented in infographics.
Okay, but you don't present anything that contradicts it.
> Infographics is a tool for conveying a message AND optimize for viral spread of this message.
Sure, infographics are a tool for conveying a desired message and encouraging its viral spread (they are a transmission medium for meme's in Dawkins original sense of the word as a replicating unit of behavior.) None of that is contrary to what I said. In fact, its pretty much a rewording of what I said.
> That is the reason for infographics to appeal to emotions, not necessarily to sell something.
Yes, the memes infographics are used to spread aren't always purchase decision memes. I don't think that does anything to change the fact that they sacrifice effective communication of factual information to serve their promotional purposes.
> Infographics are used by all kinds of nonprofits
So are infomercials; I think the comparison remains apt.
I'm not a big fan of infographics because I keep thinking of Mark Twain saying, "There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." I'm always thinking, "What are they trying to pull over on me, and how should I be arguing against it?" The infographic usually hides more than it reveals.
I like data visualization when I'm doing it for myself, or when a trusted colleague is using it to share information. Certainly there is much that can be seen more readily from a graphic than a number. But infographics are propaganda.
There is no One True Way to do a presentation. One message per slide is good for a slideshow, but taking this article to their logical extreme, they don't like prose, because you should only transfer one message per page. Infographics aren't meant to be slideshows - and slideshows suck when there isn't someone talking to them. Infographics aren't meant to have someone talking to them.
Infographics are fine, and like anything, can be abused. Their example of 'look at this infographic for 10 seconds' was just stupid. It was too small to see any of the text, and infographics aren't intended to be viewed for only ten seconds. Not to mention that if I actually strain to read the writing they're obfuscating, the graphic actually makes plenty of sense and is very clear. They're stacking the deck for their favourite argument.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 68.7 ms ] threadCute captioned photos are a dime a dozen, especially since websites for producing them for free popped up to feed some people's Facebook walls. Don't bother. Use a diagram when it really illustrates something, and write clearly the rest of the time. One of the strengths of the discussion on Hacker News is paragraphs of actual thoughtful text.
In fact, wouldn't data-to-ink ratio apply even for text?
1) They remove axis labels, forcing the reader to infer the axis from context.
2) They remove the horizontal lines, making it harder to compare different values visually.
3) They remove tickmarks, so the reader no longer knows if the origin is at zero or not.
4) They add labels with 3 significant digits, which gives the reader a false sense of precision.
Overall they arrive at a graphic that may be nicer to look at, but is functionally much worse than the original.
The one part that's really tricky is color. I actually liked the colored version a bit better, even though it provided no extra information content. Sure, if you want to use color for only one value (bacon) as a highlight that makes sense, but more generally I think a little bit of appropriate color can help maintain attention.
The 3 significant digits is the raw full-precision data, if you want to do more with the graph than get a brief impression. This in contrast to having to infer an approximation by following lines to a coarse axis and visually interpolating the desired values. Providing this data obviates objections #2 & #3.
Don't let the tickmarks, there or not, distract you from the zero. A favored lie in statistics is to conceal the lack (or off-the-chart) of zero, betting that the reader won't notice it having been dazzled by the dramatic angles on what (in many cases) is a rather flat data set. Default assumption should be the origin IS zero; if you're hiding the zero, ask yourself if you're really trying to lie to the reader. Marking the origin may provide plausible deniability, but most readers won't notice it - so act on truth, rather than concealing the lie in plain sight.
Comparison should be as natural as the context & form of the graph makes appropriate. If it's not suitably obvious, reconsider the graph type. If the reader wants more accuracy, a graph may not be the best medium - and golly there's the raw data.
The context should make the axis labels obvious and redundant. If it's not already obvious, reconsider whether the title or other commentary can be reworded to make it obvious.
Of course, all this depends on what you're really trying to tell the reader, and what form follows that function. If tick marks or labels or origin value is necessary, include it ... but whatever isn't necessary, drop it.
For example the "t's" and "r's" and "l's" in the following sidebar text are almost invisible: "The data that makes your business tick is never more convincing than when it's put in context inside a story"
Since I suck at design though I tend to need to do simpler charts. :)
[1] http://vudlab.com/simpsons/
anytime someone looks at a chart, they should be able to ask "but what happen's when x, y and z change?" being able to manipulate the data without forcing the audience to run calculations themselves should be the norm. it takes work, but i hope we get there someday.
I'd always thought that was to not confuse with graph theory.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chart%2C+plot%2...
A bit more on the actual topic of infographics (vs just data visualisation) would be a company that also "hates" them, but is putting out a tool that helps people build "living infographics". They're like the normal infographics we see, but they aren't static and you can actually interact and manipulate the data which turns them into both a marketing tool (outbound) and a market research tool (inbound).
Check them out here: http://stipso.com/
Edit: And this http://junkcharts.typepad.com/numbersruleyourworld/2010/05/m...
Quick question on the paper's methodology...is 20 a big enough sample size?
They link to an infographic on fuel sources and energy use from loveinfographics.com. Then they ask you to look at it for 10 seconds and ask they ask what you have learned.
I might as well ask people (who don't speak Chinese) to run the author's article through Bablefish English > Chinese, remove all images, then read "Why We Hate Infographics" article carefully and tell what they learned. It would, of course, be a useless article, but that does not reflect badly on the article: it was never intended to be consumed that way!
The infographic they link to is the kind of infographic that I find extremely valuable (and also quite difficult to create). A diagram which conveys a VERY significant amount of information in a very concise format. Looking at that graphic I can glean the following facts:
* Gas and oil make up a little more than half of US fuel supplies. * Electricity is used roughly equally by residential, commercial, and industrial clients (well, slightly less for industrial). * I heat my home with fuel oil. Apparently I'm a minority in that, but not by an extreme amount: we fuel oil users make up maybe 5% of the usage (not the population).
None of that information was a specific detail that the chart authors wanted to convey, so using less detailed methods would never have conveyed the information. A series of charts with numbers could have conveyed the information, but not in a form I could have processed with my brain (unless maybe I used it to build a chart like this).
I want to defend complex data visualizations that convey large amounts of information in easily perceived ways. I still think the "infographics" that just just illustrate things with pretty pictures are stupid.
This infographic article seems to borrow some of his ideas without even mentioning him.
I would suggest folks read tufte's "the cognitive style of powerpoint." Lots of similar concepts in a short pamphlet.
http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Joseph_Minard
Our point is that this pieces information could easily have been conveyed in separate simple charts, conveying each of the *data_points you quote one chart at a time.
You can understand this type of chart because you can take the time and the effort to work on the comprehension of it. And you're interested. We think it's a segregating way to convey information, leaving on the side of the road people who could have benefitted of the message were it explained in a simpler purer format.
The really simple infographic of the MS/Nokia purchase actually makes no point at all; of course the WinPho marketshare figure is a reasonable proxy for the Nokia marketshare figure, so if one is small the other will be too.
The sad thing is that I absolutely agree with your basic message, but your examples are off.
Conveying information in charts is more efficient and quicker (and can lead, yes, sometimes, to data abuse), than using cabalistic data visualizations for the sake of Adobe Illustrator that obscure the clarity of the message by adding density to it. We believe that is not a good way to carry data for maximum impact to your audience, whoever that is.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_ga...
See http://halfblog.net/2013/01/22/infographics-of-xkcd/
http://wtfviz.net
I think you have that backwards; "infographics" aren't really "information" + "graphics" but more like "infomercial" + "graphics", which is why they sacrifice accuracy -- or more generally effective communication of factual information, of which accuracy is a part -- in favor of emotional appeal.
The choices that involve tradeoff of accuracy, etc., don't precede determination of the purpose.
Okay, but you don't present anything that contradicts it.
> Infographics is a tool for conveying a message AND optimize for viral spread of this message.
Sure, infographics are a tool for conveying a desired message and encouraging its viral spread (they are a transmission medium for meme's in Dawkins original sense of the word as a replicating unit of behavior.) None of that is contrary to what I said. In fact, its pretty much a rewording of what I said.
> That is the reason for infographics to appeal to emotions, not necessarily to sell something.
Yes, the memes infographics are used to spread aren't always purchase decision memes. I don't think that does anything to change the fact that they sacrifice effective communication of factual information to serve their promotional purposes.
> Infographics are used by all kinds of nonprofits
So are infomercials; I think the comparison remains apt.
I like data visualization when I'm doing it for myself, or when a trusted colleague is using it to share information. Certainly there is much that can be seen more readily from a graphic than a number. But infographics are propaganda.
p.s. For those so inclined, this book is 40 years old but still Gold. http://archive.org/details/HowToLieWithStatistics
Infographics are fine, and like anything, can be abused. Their example of 'look at this infographic for 10 seconds' was just stupid. It was too small to see any of the text, and infographics aren't intended to be viewed for only ten seconds. Not to mention that if I actually strain to read the writing they're obfuscating, the graphic actually makes plenty of sense and is very clear. They're stacking the deck for their favourite argument.