Gallery of Data Visualization: the Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics | Hacker News Reader

Gallery of Data Visualization: the Best and Worst of Statistical Graphics

datavis.ca

149 pointsbreck10 comments

A great collection, but I thought the final diagram of

http://www.datavis.ca/gallery/say-something.php

that illustrated the orders of magnitude of radiation dosage was a great use of visual presentation to illustrate scale - why is it in the hall of shame?

If I read it correctly, they're actually trying to contrast it to the previous example, so it's an example of a good infographic. The website is not exactly clear about this though (ironically).

It looks like the website itself deserves a dart-board. It puts the beautiful illustration of radiation dosage in with the worst graphs, but that horrible network visualisation in with the best. There are numerous such examples.

The xkcd-radiation image is an example of a GOOD design. Read the text.

I too got confused assuming the list to represent all examples of poor visualisation. Reading the text didn't help much. Because the list is presented top-down in sequence, a reader immediately assumes a homogeneous list of items.

A side-by-side would make clear distinction of "Good" vs "Bad".

I agree with jmpeax. This page needs to be presented as an example of poor presentation.

I don't see where it's clearly stated that it's a good design, and it's in a "darts" section, which seems to indicate it's a "bad" example, which I infer only from the thumbs-down icon. The main gallery page never explains the "laurels and darts" terms. Are these common? Why have separate laurels and darts sections if they are both to include both good and bad examples?

On this topic, I witnessed the "Bicycle of Education" just earlier today, which had me thoroughly impressed.

https://twitter.com/research_tim/status/737757291437527040

Nice find. Reminded me of the conjoined triangle of success

An org chart, a flow chart, double pie chart and a mind map that all happens to be merged in the shape of a (poorly designed, probably dysfunctional) bicycle is quite the feat!

For more interesting bad visualizations, see also the /r/dataisugly subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisugly/top/

Unfortunately, submissions to /r/dataisbeautiful tend to comprise most of the modern submissions to /r/dataisugly nowadays.

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