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Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

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Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#61

Post by Locke1689 »

tptacek wrote: post #56
Locke1689 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Most of that chart is just big text. Big text is not an infographic. I would say the most interesting one I've come across recently is http://xkcd.com/radiation/ .

Is that a particularly effective graphic? Look at how the green doses transition to the orange ones (with a legend "all green doses combined" corresponding to an irregular number of orange boxes), and then look at the transition from orange to yellow; are all the orange doses equivalent to 50sv, or are all the orange doses equivalent to one box? I agree that the XKCD "radiation" chart is an instance where an XKCD-sty…

I would definitely agree that it isn't the best graphic, but I think it does an admirable job of portraying the primary thing it was created to portray (I assume) -- the context of radiation dose levels. I can very quickly eyeball the order of magnitude difference between a plane flight and a chest X-ray, while I could also dial down to the more precise differences if necessary.

The "radiation doses combined" transition seemed fairly clear to me. In every case the collective doses are measured in the new SI-prefixed unit delineated by the scale on the left. If I were to criticize anything I would be a little more wary of the color choices and the box labeling. The = sign and parenthetic dose notation seems a little confused (the blue box dose size uses a different convention from the others).

While the chart could layout some things a little more clearly, I think that Minard's chart shows that one shouldn't reduce information content solely for the sake of simplicity.

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#62

Post by lloeki »

tptacek wrote: post #54
lloeki wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Virtually all infographics are indeed terrible visualizations of information. I do not agree. I've seen quite a bunch that – although obviously not a definitive source of information – give a good sense of perspective. Here's one [0] that came back to mind. [0] http://mozy.com/blog/misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/

One of the most recurrent metrics in Tufte's books is "density". Another is "comparisons on multiple axes" (I'm going from memory, I think he had a more technical term). How do you think this particular graphic does? Graphics like this seem more like posters promoting an idea than tools for understanding complex data.

Complex data relative to what? You and I can (quite) easily grasp how huge is a petabyte, an exabyte, a zettabyte even; yet someone not "in the field" will have a hard time grasping what represents such an amount of information.

Of course this one being ordered by Mozy should trigger some warnings about it being a covert ad, but it does not detract from the potential veracity of the data.

This one is admittedly quite simple, but should we discard all infographics on the merit they're not of Tufte level?

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#63

Post by tptacek »

lloeki wrote: post #62
tptacek wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most recurrent metrics in Tufte's books is "density". Another is "comparisons on multiple axes" (I'm going from memory, I think he had a more technical term). How do you think this particular graphic does? Graphics like this seem more like posters promoting an idea than tools for understanding complex data.

Complex data relative to what? You and I can (quite) easily grasp how huge is a petabyte, an exabyte, a zettabyte even; yet someone not "in the field" will have a hard time grasping what represents such an amount of information. Of course this one being ordered by Mozy should trigger some warnings about it being a covert ad, but it does not detract from the potential veracity of the data. This one is admittedly quite…

Nobody is arguing that we should discard bad infographics.

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#64

Post by tptacek »

Locke1689 wrote: post #61
tptacek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a particularly effective graphic? Look at how the green doses transition to the orange ones (with a legend "all green doses combined" corresponding to an irregular number of orange boxes), and then look at the transition from orange to yellow; are all the orange doses equivalent to 50sv, or are all the orange doses equivalent to one box? I agree that the XKCD "radiation" chart is an instance where an XKCD-sty…

I would definitely agree that it isn't the best graphic, but I think it does an admirable job of portraying the primary thing it was created to portray (I assume) -- the context of radiation dose levels. I can very quickly eyeball the order of magnitude difference between a plane flight and a chest X-ray, while I could also dial down to the more precise differences if necessary. The "radiation doses combined" transit…

I think the chart would do better if removed from the arbitrary constraint of XKCD's page framing; if, for instance, a suitably large canvas was used, so that the eyes could immediately grasp the comparatively minimal exposures from common radiation sources to (say) the gigantic exposures from Chernobyl.

It's clearly within Munroe's capability to make such a graphic; he did this one on a deadline. I'm not criticizing Munroe (though: not an XKCD fan), just making an objective assessment of the graphic.

And, like I said: here's a case where a graphic, even an imperfect one, probably communicates rich information more effectively than prose. Unlike the "relative sizes of data" infographic upthread.

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#65

Post by shabble »

The wide proliferation of really terrible ones seems to tie into some murky SEO tactic of getting a designer to whip you up something 'viral', stick it on the www.totallylegitadultdiplomaswithfreeviagra.com root, and then have a cute little 'share this' link that gives you the url along with a blob of html stuffed with invisible SEOjunk keywords, and rely on people's laziness and stupidity to get the backlinks flowing.

I recall reading a good article on it a while back, but oddly enough, "SEO infographics" is now a sufficiently desirable niche that there are junk infographics just waiting to take your call.

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#66

Post by jrockway »

I disagree. I now mentally associate the word "infographic" with "poorly-thought-out blog post that the author wrote in Photoshop in order to familiarize himself with all of its features." As for a graphic that conveys information, well, those don't exist anymore.

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#67

Post by dredmorbius »

Locke1689 wrote: post #50
lloeki wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Virtually all infographics are indeed terrible visualizations of information. I do not agree. I've seen quite a bunch that – although obviously not a definitive source of information – give a good sense of perspective. Here's one [0] that came back to mind. [0] http://mozy.com/blog/misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/

Really? Most of that chart is just big text. Big text is not an infographic. I would say the most interesting one I've come across recently is http://xkcd.com/radiation/ .

Randall's come out with a number of these.

Scale of the Universe, Radiation, IPv4 space, lakes & oceans, gravity wells, and Money all come to mind.

http://xkcd.com/195/

http://xkcd.com/980/

http://xkcd.com/482/

https://xkcd.com/1040/

http://xkcd.com/681/

(You can curse me later).

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#69

Post by mjschultz »

lloeki wrote: post #49
tptacek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not pretend there's more controversy here than there really is. If anything, the point he's making is too banal. Almost the whole of _The Visual Display of Quantitative Information_ argues against the style of visualization this post argues against. Virtually all infographics are indeed terrible visualizations of information.

> Virtually all infographics are indeed terrible visualizations of information. I do not agree. I've seen quite a bunch that – although obviously not a definitive source of information – give a good sense of perspective. Here's one [0] that came back to mind. [0] http://mozy.com/blog/misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/

That graphic isn't even internally consistent. I measure the 2000 "computer usage" circle at 56 pixels in diameter and the outer 2008 circle at 195 pixels. The text states usage in that time frame has increase 342%. Visually the change is 1,212%.

In text it states that Hitatchi came out with the first terabyte drive which holds 1000 GB. Later, in graphic form, it shows 1024 GB = 1 TB.

In the Internet Users by millions chart the author uses a bar graph (time is continuous, why use a bar graph) with no x-axis labels and then to express hard drive price over time we get a line chart (still no x-axis label). The missing labels are okay because there are callouts specifying the dates, but the change in graph type is weird.

Re: Your infographic isn't an infographic. It's just a crappy graphic.

#70

Post by tokenadult »

Karunamon wrote: post #45
juddlyon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's fair, Ian Laurie has been a solid blogger for years and is often critical of current trends. He ventures into technical topics from time to time too. He may not be your cup of tea but he's certainly not the cheap PR stunt kind of internet marketing guy (I'm not sure you're insinuating that, just wanted to let folks who are interested in web marketing topics that he's worth paying attention to IMO)…

>is often critical of current trends I'm seeing more and more of this kind of article on HN recently. Solid blogger or not, if I had a penny for every "$current_trend sucks" screed posted here and frontpaged, I'd be retiring by now. Honestly, it gets old hearing people complain about everything under the sun after a while. (And I say this as someone who complains a hell of a lot on his own blog, but then again I've n…

I'm seeing more and more of this kind of article on HN recently. Solid blogger or not, if I had a penny for every "$current_trend sucks" screed posted here and frontpaged, I'd be retiring by now.

Isn't the quoted statement from your comment a "$current_trend sucks" statement? I guess you see the need to decry some current trends, just as all of us do from time to time.

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