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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.

#71

Post by varikin »

mjschultz wrote: post #69
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/

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 million…

I disagree. It fairly consistent. By your numbers, the computer usage in 2000 is 56 pixels in diameter while the diameter for the circle representing 2008 is 195 pixels. By area of the circle, The bigger cicle (half circle really, would that matter?) is 1212% larger. By diameter, the larger circle is 348% larger. That is a couple pixels (about 3 pixels) or percentage points off (about 5 percent). That is accurate enough to show scale on an infographic in my mind.

As for Hitatchi creating a 1TB drive that holds 1000GB, but later stating that 1TB is 1024 GB, isn't 1 terabyte technically 1000GB which the hard drive companies use, but also frequently used—incorrectly—to reference 1024 GiB or 1024^4 bytes? This other number, 1024GiB is actually a tebibyte, not a terrabyte. They are technically incorrect, but from the standpoint of the majority of the population, the difference between a terabyte and a teribyte is just small print on the back of box. The infographic could be clearer, but honestly, do you think this detail is worthwhile for trying to show the scale of what a petabyte is? That is what, a 5% difference in size? I think that is, when looking a petabyte. If I did my math correctly, there is 50GB of loss (or is that GiB?)

In the end, they are trying to show that a petabyte is a fuck-ton of data. More data than many people can wrap there mind around. They are trying to show scale. How you define the numbers are complicated because we have SI units for both binary and decimal which don't match up and IEC units for the binary side as well. The average consumer isn't going to know or care. They could care that a petabtye is HUGE. The infographic portrays this without trying to bog the consumer down in differences in technical jargon that most of use technical people know but don't bother using correctly ourselves most of the time.

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

#72

Post by thwarted »

benihana wrote: post #19
thwarted wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Links are difficult to share?

Static images being easy to share does not mean links are difficult to share. It means static images are easier to share.

Are they? Save an image to a file, attach to an email. Cut and paste a link into an email or an IM. Or provide a link to a page with the image: same exact work as a link to a non-image. This is, at the very least, the same amount of work.

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

#73

Post by Karunamon »

tokenadult wrote: post #70
Karunamon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Heh. Kind of funny that I didn't see that.

I guess what I was getting at is that seeing the same thing over and over again tends to get old.

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

#74

Post by Karunamon »

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…

>You and I can (quite) easily grasp how huge is a petabyte, an exabyte, a zettabyte even

Can you really? I work with video every day. Terabytes are nothing when we're talking HD content and lots of it. It's still pretty hard for me to visualize, even sitting at a system with the details up in front of me, what exactly a petabyte is. Let alone hundreds of thousands of them.

It's like asking an average person to visualize a trillion dollars. There exists a point once a quantity becomes sufficiently large that you tend to stop consciously processing it.

-edit, realize this sounds really snarky, it's not. I am legitimately curious how you quantify that much stuff.

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

#75

Post by ghaff »

saraid216 wrote: post #52
replicatorblog wrote: post #37

Maybe instead of bashing infographics designers would benefit from figuring out why they are so popular? This "Cult of Tufte" stuff is kind of grating. Minard's map showing Napoleon's march into Moscow is a great example. It is an elegant chart that shows 6 key bits of information (# of troops, location, direction, temp, time, attrition), but it's a bore to look at. It might be the greatest piece of info design ever,…

Flashy > Informative?

I'm not sure I'd have used the term "a bore," but I think the parent poster's point is that the Napoleon graphic doesn't immediately draw you in. If you study it for a while, it manages to accumulate a great deal of information in a remarkably integrated way but it takes study to appreciate what is being communicated. While that graphic is rightfully famous, it wouldn't IMO work especially well in, say, a conference presentation setting or even a newspaper.

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

#76

Post by tptacek »

varikin wrote: post #71
mjschultz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 million…

I disagree. It fairly consistent. By your numbers, the computer usage in 2000 is 56 pixels in diameter while the diameter for the circle representing 2008 is 195 pixels. By area of the circle, The bigger cicle (half circle really, would that matter?) is 1212% larger. By diameter, the larger circle is 348% larger. That is a couple pixels (about 3 pixels) or percentage points off (about 5 percent). That is accurate eno…

Again, this probably isn't controversial: it's simply a mistake to make one-dimensional comparisons with a two-dimensional scale. Tufte called this specific example (abusing area as a one-dimensional scale) an examplar of the "lie factor" in statistical graphics.

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

#77

Post by saraid216 »

ghaff wrote: post #75
saraid216 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flashy > Informative?

I'm not sure I'd have used the term "a bore," but I think the parent poster's point is that the Napoleon graphic doesn't immediately draw you in. If you study it for a while, it manages to accumulate a great deal of information in a remarkably integrated way but it takes study to appreciate what is being communicated. While that graphic is rightfully famous, it wouldn't IMO work especially well in, say, a conference…

Why does it need to draw you in?

If you don't need the information that it conveys, there's no reason for you to study it. If you do want the information, then you'll take the time necessary to understand it.

To me, if your graphical elements are running the show in a conference presentation setting or in a newspaper, you're already doing something wrong. Those aren't the right media for infographics (well, newspapers would sometimes find them useful).

Don't conflate media unnecessarily. If you need something flashy, make something flashy. If you need something informative, make something informative. Don't repudiate something meant to be flashy for being uninformative, nor something meant to be informative for being insufficiently flashy.

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

#78

Post by lloeki »

Karunamon wrote: post #74
lloeki wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>You and I can (quite) easily grasp how huge is a petabyte, an exabyte, a zettabyte even Can you really? I work with video every day. Terabytes are nothing when we're talking HD content and lots of it. It's still pretty hard for me to visualize, even sitting at a system with the details up in front of me, what exactly a petabyte is. Let alone hundreds of thousands of them. It's like asking an average person to visual…

I've been working on problems at various scales from subatomic to galactic scale and about everything in between. At some point, when you're genuinely interested about what you do, you build mental bridges between domains and scales and values and units, you... connect some dots. You start understanding what a log/exp is, what that "shooting through the roof" profoundly means. By understanding I mean you start feeling it with your gut. So when someone talks about one Zm I could take it as a pure value, but I could try and get the feel of it. It's overwhelming, so much so that I can physically feel the cognitive weight of it on my mind. So when I make some conversion and find that 1Zm is about 100'000 light years, and I know (whatever the light-year value means, I take it as pure, transitional value to an item of knowledge) that the Milky Way is about that size in diameter, only then do I feel the absolutely immense size of our galaxy. I must insist that it's no more the vision of the galaxy that gives weight to a Zm to me, but the Zm that gives the incredible sense of dimension of that pack of matter.

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

#79

Post by sambeau »

tptacek wrote: post #59
lloeki wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An infographic is not a chart. e.g [0] has a lot of text. [0] http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

Notice how that graphic uses graphics primarily to illustrate, and often uses illustration in lieu of words ; to fully communicate the same ideas in prose you might need many paragraphs. Notice how it uses color exclusively as a subtle callout. Notice how the color choice highlights effectively but doesn't draw a blinding neon sign. By contrast, the infographic you like uses illustrations incorrectly; for instance, i…

That is a truly wonderful infographic. I'd never seen it before. Thanks.

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

#80

Post by mark_integerdsv »

pault wrote: post #38
billpatrianakos wrote: post #11

I agree completely but unfortunately I doubt people will do them right until they stop attracting eyeballs. To the well informed, bad info graphics are a plague on the web. To my sister's teenage friends and my mother's circle of friends they're "oh cool, I don't have to read!". Self respecting graphic designers won't create these awful "info graphics" but anyone who's looking to attract some eyeballs in the hopes of…

Self respecting graphic designers won't create these awful "info graphics" Disagree! Kelli Anderson is a fantastic designer and makes all kinds of infographics (although I imagine they cost a lot more than $200): http://www.kellianderson.com/projects/infographics.html

Andersen is a great example, as is Feltron!
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