Monday, May 25, 2009
Hypothesis: edit wars have a lot of edits, but few editors
This is a post by guest blogger Guillaume Marceau from http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/
Click on the chart to see the full-sized version.
The essence when making charts is to make use of our eyes’ fantastic ability to compare amounts across a page. In fact, our eyes are so good at these kinds of comparison that a chart will often read better if two data sets are placed next to each other (aligned with a common axis) rather than overlayed. Edward Tufte popularized this idea in his book Envisioning Information by calling it a ‘small multiples’ design. This simple idea is surprisingly versatile. For instance, it can inform the design of a user interface.
A well-designed chart should read like a book so that it may become an integral part of the narrative in support of the argument. In the chart above, the labels are disposed in normal reading order, from left to right, top to bottom. As we read, we understand the nature of the computation that was applied, and the significance of the three humps in the last chart.