Graphic of Michael Jackson's hits over time | Hacker News Reader

Graphic of Michael Jackson's hits over time

quotesque.net

16 pointsdunk01011 comments

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I'm pretty sure that this wasn't the point, but that's among the worst info-graphics I've ever seen.

- unreadably small

- no scale

- completely gratuitous circular presentation

Seriously. It's awful.

When you click the graph & view it full size its pretty good, I think.

still too small for comfort, and the graph isn't served well by the circle.. hard to compare 2 things of similar success.. compared to a bar graph etc..

More importantly, I have to tilt my head to read anything. Who decided this was a good idea? At least keep the text rotated right if you have to make a circle graph.

Agreed. It's a shame what they did to this potentially interesting dataset. I can hardly imagine a worse way to plot it.

They should just release a TSV with the raw data, then someone with a clue can bake some real graphs.

Are you viewing the large version or the medium one. The large one, http://quotesque.net/images/stdio003-web-l.jpg, has text plenty big enough to read.

I wish I could rotate the graph, that would make it easier to read.

I agree that it's small and I am not convinced by the circular projection either. I was posting that myself.

But what do you mean for "no scale"?

Each slice is scaled according to the number of listeners and the color gives another dimension (tracks 'loved' by the users).

I'm not sure exactly what the parents means, but In my opinion there should be a color bar that shows what the lightest color and darkest color on the board means, actually probably two color bars, one for each ring. This would be useful even if color is being used only as a relative measure not as an absolute "number of times loved".

Using color as an axis can be notoriously difficult to do properly/clearly (consider linear vs logarithmic mappings or using hue, saturation and/or value together to show one dimensional data) without even getting into aesthetic considerations.

Lest you think that I am being too critical, the fact that the graphic designer only modulated color value and not hue and saturation makes this chart better than some that I have seen.

Agreed. I see this type of graph all over the place lately, along with versions that have lines connecting the slices.

If a story or insight doesn't immediately jump out from your graph, you are doing it wrong.

You're right it is awful. And now watch as this post becomes invisible as it's downvoted for discussing what belongs on HN.

This and most of everything else you see on HN on the weekends is crap. But it is also a preview of what HN will look on the weekdays in the not too distant future.

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