What people are really buying online: infographic

permuto.com

7 pointsaraneae4 comments

Christ onna bike. They seem to have gone out of their way to invent charts that are even more confusing than pie charts. Let's do an annulus! With a wavy edge! And then differently-sized hemicircles... wha?

This is interesting information (eg % of online vs in-store clothing purchases) but badly presented.

I'll admit the wavy-edged annulus is a little over the top, but compared to a standard pie chart, I think the double hemicircle is clever and more visually interesting than a standard pie, with no loss of information.

The hemicircles are still too clever by half. We tend to judge the difference in the height of the facing edges, but a hemi that is twice the height of another is actually 4 times the area.

So an 80/20 split will appear to be more like 66/33 if you are not paying attention. On that page there is one stat with a 10/1 ratio, but at first glance it feels more like 4/1 or 5/1.

I don't think I buy it (so to speak). More food, beer and wine purchases online than offline? I'm pretty hardcore about buying online whenever possible, and I buy only a miniscule percentage of my food online and no wine or beer online.

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