five years of chart reading - junk charts · word cloud “the tag cloud is one of the most...
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Function-fitting Forms
Kaiser Fung : Junk ChartsJanuary 18, 2011@NY Data Viz Meetup
+Junk Charts blogjunkcharts.typepad.com
First post, July 2005
Pioneering chart critique blog
Charts from everyday life
Reconstructed
Artform
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+Impact
Junk chart has become a popular concept (derived from Tufte’s chartjunk); 41,000 results on Google search
Features: Yahoo! Pick; Science; Kottke.org; Media Bistro; Pollster.com; Portfolio.com; Presentation Zen; Andrew Gelman; Unbossed; CACM; many more
Books: Handbook of Data Visualization; Excel 2007 Charts; The Secret Power of Blogging; Web Analytics 2.0; Discovering Statistics Using SAS (also SPSS)
Reader submissions
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+Junk Charts Trifecta Checkup
What is the practical question?
What does the chart
say?
What does the data
say?
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+Self-sufficiency
Graphical elements must add to the data
Corollary: if the entire data set must be printed on the chart, the graphical elements are not self-sufficient
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+The book
Wider scope than the blog: how to think about data in everyday life?
Stories / concepts
Contemporary
Relevant
Reality of statistical practice
Book Blog: junkcharts.typepad.com/ NumbersRuleYourWorld
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Word cloud
“The tag cloud is one of the most pleasing new charts to appear in recent years.”
“Tag clouds are histograms”, Oct 15 2005. Junk Charts.“Concordance, or tag clouds”, Jan 24 2006. Junk Charts.
“The data itself is nothing more than a frequency table (wedding: 132,356; party: 120,222; etc.) but this presentation is visually appealing and aptly functional.”
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Tag cloud from circa Oct 2005
Word clouds
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Tag cloud from circa Oct 2005
Don’t sort alphabetically.
Make data proportional to area, not height or length.
Word clouds
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Form: Shape
Cloud
List
Custom
flickr; Political tag clouds blog; BBC; Neoformix
Angular
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Form: Font
Large caps
Script
Serif
Jerry the Punkrat; Kauffan Economic Outlook; Information Access blog
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Form: Color
Jerry the Punkrat; Kauffan Economic Outlook; Information Access blog; Neoformix
Rainbow, dark background
Shades of one color
Black on white
Meaningful background
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Form: Density
Washington Post; Information Access blog
Sparse Dense
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Form: Orientation
Horizontal Mixed
Scattered
Washington Post; BBC; Political tag clouds blog 13
Form: Sort order
Alphabetical Frequency
Unsorted
flickr; BBC; Ronan Lyons blog
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Scale
15Ronan Lyons blog
Scale
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promise
McCain
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1.6
# Length Height Area
184
106
1.7
48
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2.0
8832
2544
3.5
Ronan Lyons blog
Binning
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/obama-speeches 16
Binning
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/obama-speeches 16
Binning
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/obama-speeches 16
None
Wider bins?
Clustering
Ronan Lyons blog; Neoformix 17
Relative and absolute measures
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Noise Removal
More than just stop words!
Media Bistro; Washington Post 19
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Form
Shape
Font
Color
Density
Orientation
Sort order
Function
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Scale
Binning
Clustering
Relative measures
Noise removal
An Amazing Examplehttp://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/01/17/washington/20090117_ADDRESSES.html
Context
Data
Most significant wordsat the top
Relative to average21
A Function-fitting Form
Comparison across time
Details
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+Thank you
Graphics Blog: junkcharts.typepad.comBook Blog: junkcharts.typepad.com/
NumbersRuleYourWorldTwitter: junkchartsEmail: [email protected]
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