Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

andrewducker.livejournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 75 posts

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#11

Post by nailer »

einhverfr wrote: post #5

Why? Because if you make them perfectly proportional, the labels are hard to read. ;-) For example, try actually making sense out of the second diagram on that site. It's far harder to read than the first. You can actually only make sense of it by cross-referencing with the first diagram.

The second diagram is hard has what seems to be bitmap fonts and uses a flowing set of similar colours, making it harder to distinguish between the manufacturers, rather than distinct ones.

While making for bad UX, it doesn't change the truth of the information at all, and it would be easy to fix these issues.

Edit: Looks like someone already has: http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/13/nielsen-needs-to-work-on-their...

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#13

Post by einhverfr »

nailer wrote: post #11
einhverfr wrote: post #5

Why? Because if you make them perfectly proportional, the labels are hard to read. ;-) For example, try actually making sense out of the second diagram on that site. It's far harder to read than the first. You can actually only make sense of it by cross-referencing with the first diagram.

The second diagram is hard has what seems to be bitmap fonts and uses a flowing set of similar colours, making it harder to distinguish between the manufacturers, rather than distinct ones. While making for bad UX, it doesn't change the truth of the information at all, and it would be easy to fix these issues. Edit: Looks like someone already has: http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/13/nielsen-needs-to-work-on-their...

Fonts are still smaller to read, and Symbian, etc. are omitted from the labels. It also conveys a lot less information.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#14

Post by Havoc »

einhverfr wrote: post #5

Why? Because if you make them perfectly proportional, the labels are hard to read. ;-) For example, try actually making sense out of the second diagram on that site. It's far harder to read than the first. You can actually only make sense of it by cross-referencing with the first diagram.

So now its misleading...but thats OK because at least one can read it?!?

What kind of logic is that?

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#15

Post by einhverfr »

Havoc wrote: post #14
einhverfr wrote: post #5

Why? Because if you make them perfectly proportional, the labels are hard to read. ;-) For example, try actually making sense out of the second diagram on that site. It's far harder to read than the first. You can actually only make sense of it by cross-referencing with the first diagram.

So now its misleading...but thats OK because at least one can read it?!? What kind of logic is that?

All kinds of graphs are misleading if we expect them to be visually perfect. If you look at http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb for example, their graph goes from about 30 to about 31, so if you read it the same way you might think Facebook stock has been almost to 0 a bunch....

The question IMO is not whether it is visually misleading but whether it conveys information in a usable form, and whether the information it conveys in that form is misleading, and I don't see it.

If we adopt a visually perfect line doesn't that mean all graphs must be linear (no plotting on non-linear scales, even though this is useful in some contexts), start with an origin of (0,0) and so forth? What percentage of graphs do you see that obey these rules?

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#16

Post by qxcv »

This looks suspiciously like logarithmic scaling which, as XKCD readers will attest, is a pretty typical technique for representing statistics which have differences measured in orders-of-magnitude. I'm not sure what all the panic on here is for, it's not as if Nielson only bumped Nokia, RIM and Microsoft's column widths.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#17

Post by nkoren »

latch wrote: post #10
flyosity wrote: post #7

The original person who noticed this was a writer from 9to5mac and he made his own more accurate graphic a few days before this post was written. http://9to5mac.com/2012/07/13/nielsen-needs-to-work-on-their...

and I was having a hard time telling what % HTC for WinPhone 7 had in the OP. Again, this version might be proportionally more accurate, but it drastically reduces the amount of information. Nielsen's is the best so far, by far.

I really don't think that information which is legible but completely wrong is preferable to information which is slightly less legible but completely correct.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#18

Post by apl »

qxcv wrote: post #16

This looks suspiciously like logarithmic scaling which, as XKCD readers will attest, is a pretty typical technique for representing statistics which have differences measured in orders-of-magnitude. I'm not sure what all the panic on here is for, it's not as if Nielson only bumped Nokia, RIM and Microsoft's column widths.

  > This looks suspiciously like logarithmic scaling which,
  > as XKCD readers will attest, is a pretty typical
  > technique for representing statistics which have
  > differences measured in orders-of-magnitude.
It is, but never implicitly. Sure, you can get the actual proportions from reading the markings at the bottom, but then what's the point of visualizing in the first place? Either make your logarithmic scaling explicit and clear (as is done in scientific graphs), or use generally assumed linear scaling.

  > it's not as if Nielson only bumped Nokia, RIM and
  > Microsoft's column widths.
No, but it amounts to the same thing.

Re: Lying with pictures: Smartphone manufacturer share by OS

#20

Post by route66 »

einhverfr wrote: post #15
Havoc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now its misleading...but thats OK because at least one can read it?!? What kind of logic is that?

All kinds of graphs are misleading if we expect them to be visually perfect. If you look at http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb for example, their graph goes from about 30 to about 31, so if you read it the same way you might think Facebook stock has been almost to 0 a bunch.... The question IMO is not whether it is visually misleading but whether it conveys information in a usable form, and whether the information it co…

One-0eyed person here. Let me help you out.

The Nielsen graph clearly represents 51% Android as about 33%, apple's 34% as one quarter and the Blackberry als one-fifth. If you prefer readability of the labels over more-or-less-correctness of a graph which suggests it covers a full 100% and it's subdivisions you should maybe just use a table. As in Excel. A 30-31 x-scale is misleadin but showing 10% as 20% though is more than sloppy because you do show the "origin". This has got nothing to do with visually perfect.

Post reply on HN