Bella consults

kicker magazine still isn’t doing sparklines. So I’ll do them for you: This is how they played soccer. So far.

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	Goals	Diff.	Pts	Performance
1	Bayern München	17	12	1	4	43 : 10	33	37
2	Borussia Dortmund	17	10	4	3	35 : 12	23	34
3	Schalke 04	17	11	1	5	38 : 22	16	34
4	Bor. Mönchengladbach	17	10	3	4	25 : 11	14	33
5	Werder Bremen	17	9	2	6	30 : 31	-1	29
6	Bayer Leverkusen	17	7	5	5	22 : 22	0	26
7	Hannover 96	17	5	8	4	20 : 24	-4	23
8	VfB Stuttgart	17	6	4	7	23 : 20	3	22
9	1899 Hoffenheim	17	6	4	7	19 : 19	0	22
10	1. FC Köln	17	6	3	8	27 : 35	-8	21
11	Hertha BSC Berlin	17	4	8	5	24 : 26	-2	20
12	VfL Wolfsburg	17	6	2	9	23 : 34	-11	20
13	Hamburger SV	17	4	7	6	21 : 27	-6	19
14	FSV Mainz 05	17	4	6	7	22 : 29	-7	18
15	1. FC Nürnberg	17	5	3	9	17 : 28	-11	18
16	1. FC Kaiserslautern	17	3	7	7	13 : 21	-8	16
17	FC Augsburg	17	3	6	8	15 : 28	-13	15
18	SC Freiburg	17	3	4	10	21 : 39	-18	13

Soccer bundesliga, 2011/2012 season after 17 matches. Source: DeltaMaster.

And this is how they played last time.

Pos	Team	Pld	W	D	L	Goals	Diff.	Pts	Performance
1	Borussia Dortmund	34	23	6	5	67 : 22	45	75
2	Bayer Leverkusen	34	20	8	6	64 : 44	20	68
3	Bayern München	34	19	8	7	81 : 40	41	65
4	Hannover 96	34	19	3	12	49 : 45	4	60
5	FSV Mainz 05	34	18	4	12	52 : 39	13	58
6	1. FC Nürnberg	34	13	8	13	47 : 45	2	47
7	1. FC Kaiserslautern	34	13	7	14	48 : 51	-3	46
8	Hamburger SV	34	12	9	13	46 : 52	-6	45
9	SC Freiburg	34	13	5	16	41 : 50	-9	44
10	1. FC Köln	34	13	5	16	47 : 62	-15	44
11	1899 Hoffenheim	34	11	10	13	50 : 50	0	43
12	VfB Stuttgart	34	12	6	16	60 : 59	1	42
13	Werder Bremen	34	10	11	13	47 : 61	-14	41
14	Schalke 04	34	11	7	16	38 : 44	-6	40
15	VfL Wolfsburg	34	9	11	14	43 : 48	-5	38
16	Bor. Mönchengladbach	34	10	6	18	48 : 65	-17	36
17	Eintracht Frankfurt	34	9	7	18	31 : 49	-18	34
18	FC St. Pauli	34	8	5	21	35 : 68	-33	29

Soccer bundesliga, 2010/2011 season, final table. Source: DeltaMaster.

I showed kicker the sparklines in 2005. And he did in 2007, 2008, and 2010. They didn’t want them. The readers don’t understand, they said. I don’t understand kicker.

William* says: Chop the feet off lines. And move them around until everything is banking at 45 degrees. On average. Then it looks good. And can be read well. Because: Every angle is as different as it can be. Look. Pretty flat. Angles pretty similar. Not good.

Unemployment figures in Germany, 1991–2010. Data: Federal Statistical Office.

Now squashed up. Until everything is banking at 45 degrees. On average. Much better.

Chopping allowed. Even better. But no longer 45 degrees.

Chopped off and everything at 45 degrees. Best of all.

The newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” drew it that way. More or less. Looks good.

New students at German universities. Source: Welt am Sonntag, 2011–12–11, page 7.

* Cleveland, W. S., The Elements of Graphing Data, Murray Hill 1994, pages 251–256.

Variety is the spice of life. But sometimes Die Welt has too much variety. Three times from percent to percent. Three times different diagram types. Three times a new lesson to learn.

Column 1: Circles. From big to small is bad. Light is now. Dark next year. Circle is growth? Hm.

Column 2: Columns. Dangling. From short to long is bad. Agreed. Dark is now. Light next year. Hm.

Column 3: Lines. From low to high is bad. Disagreed. Other way round.

Euro countries under pressure (development of economy and deficit): GDP growth; annual deficit and debt level as % of GDP. Source: Die Welt, 2011–12–07, page 5. Click to enlarge.

Got a few mistakes as well. Portuguese circles. Finnish lines.

Problem was: Scales for –5.5 to +8 and –10.3 to +0.8, and 5.8 to 198.3. Scale globally? Doesn’t work. Big squashes small. Scale individually? How? With columns? Then everything looks alike. Lines would have worked. As in the right-hand column. Lesson learned once. Understood three times.

Stock market in the daily newspaper is tricky. Because: The prices are from yesterday. There are new ones today. And tomorrow. What’s important? Mood? Yesterday’s? Exact index level? Change? Absolute? Relative? Trend?

I had a look at the front-page indexes. In all the daily newspapers. The FAZ doesn’t have one. In the FTD, NZZ, NN, NZ, and RP: trend arrows. For the day before yesterday to yesterday. Hmm. The FTD and NN got my hackles up once before. The NN and NZ only show the absolute change. Not so good for comparing.

The Handelsblatt, International Herald Tribune, SZ, Wall Street Journal, and Die Welt use triangles. Triangles are better than trend arrows. Because they don’t slope. And they don’t pretend to be a trend. The WSJ doesn’t use algebraic signs. (Not visible here. But here.) Ouch.

The Handelsblatt has the largest triangles. Across the page. Not good for reading. But okay for picking up yesterday’s mood. The WSJ has small triangles. Too small to create a mood. And hard to read. The triangles in Die Welt are even smaller. Too small.

Graphics from left to right as mentioned in the text, all from 2011–11–29.

The newspaper “Welt kompakt” drew Italy. Punched the flag. Got rid of the zero line. Silvio would think it’s great. More deficit now means less area. But he’d be insulted about the flag.

State finances in Italy: National deficit, debt level, expenditure/revenues. Source: Welt kompakt, 2011–11–10, page 20.

How to do it better? Fill in up above. Not below. Logical. Or: Make the negative sign positive.

It’s not correct at the bottom either. They need to fill in between the lines.

Even better: Don’t fill in at all. Not at the top. Not in the middle. Not at the bottom. After all: Now areas are being compared. They have different scales. And are not comparable.

I’ll have a snap at William one more time. He invented and botched up time series, dual time series – and pies:

The width of the pie means something. The two columns to the left and right also mean something. The steepness of the line between the two columns means zilch. Because: That depends on the pie width. Not on the column height. Don’t copy.

Willy also invented bars. I could also nag about them. Labeling to the left, scale to the bottom. And so on. But I won’t.

Studying role models is fine. Simply copying is not.

I wanted to add something about pictograms and ships. Firstly: There are good pictograms and bad pictograms. The ships are good. As I already said. And as he did.

Source: Wall Street Journal, 2010–08–17, page 3.

Secondly: Why? Because they are well drawn. Look closely.

That is a cargo ship. For real.

That is still a cargo ship. But without the trimmings.

Still a cargo ship.

And still a cargo ship. Not a paper ship. Not a ferry. Not a sailing boat. As much cargo ship as necessary. As small as possible. As authentic as necessary. As simple as possible. That’s how to pick just a gram successfully.

Spending money is more fun when you’re pale blue than dark blue. But it’s most fun when you’re cornflower blue. No? Girls are paler than boys. The younger you are, the paler you are. No? No.

2011 consumer study among boys (Jungen) and girls (Mädchen) aged 15–17 and 12–14 years old. Source: Welt online and Welt kompakt, 2011–09–21, page 23.

Learning legends is boring. And generally unnecessary.

Redesign: me.

I already said this here five years ago. Wow. What an old dog I am.

Warnings also have to be issued about the German weather. Officially. The national meteorological service in Germany is called Deutscher Wetterdienst. On 9 September there was a sudden formation of ice. Throughout Germany. Lake Constance was even colder. Munich was muddy. I’ll stick with the French weather.

Stop! Put the winter tires away again. I misunderstood it. It’s explained on the detailed map. With a legend.

Legend: Purple = Warnings about severe storms; Red = Storm warnings; Orange = Warnings about distinctive weather; Yellow = Weather warnings; Blue = No warnings

I see. Blue “everything okay”. Yellow warning weather. Orange “distinctive”. Hm. Not so good: Blue makes me think of water. Or cold weather. Maybe traffic-signal green would be better. The way the French do it? I think so. Because traffic-signal colors are a good way of warning on maps. But country colors on maps don’t signal well.

Maps for data are difficult. Traffic lights as well. Maps for a country are great. Traffic lights for “danger” – “don’t know” – “no danger” are great as well. I find map traffic lights for dangers in a country really great. You understand them even in small. You understand where. You understand how.

Look:

You had to be careful on Thursday. Almost in the whole of France. And especially down in the bottom right. But not the Corsicans at all.

Because there might be lightning.

On Saturday you had to be careful especially on the right-hand side. Including the Corsicans.

Today you can go for a nice stroll without worrying.

But put lots of sun-tan lotion on your coat.

Source: All graphics from Météo France.

Nice: The German bank Comdirect is drawing graphical tables. Not so nice: The reference lines. They are wrong. Because they make some of the bars look like columns. I’ve corrected them. The way I did in my diagrammatic.

Source: Comdirect Informer showing stock quote data, 2011–08–09. Enlargement (center) and redesign (below): Me.

When do we need reference lines? When the eye needs to be guided. Columns and bars don’t normally need reference lines. Because a column is higher than it is wide. A bar is wider than it is high. Exception: Thin bars and flat columns. What to do then: Feet for columns, borders for bars. The bars at Comdirect have feet. The wrong way round.

You can’t see some things. Because they are not an object. Or because they are a law. Or because they apply to a lot of things. Then you have to find an example. The example can involve an object. You can draw the object. When you understand everything, you have an infographic. Like this one:

Trading the Right to Pollute

If the object is not an example, it looks like this. Pretty amusing. Customers and suppliers are spheres. Payment and production are propellers. It’s easier to understand without a graphic.

Your enterprise

Source: both from Kondo, Hiroko, The Best Informational Diagrams, Tokyo 1999, pp. 25 and 37.

Some people say Bill (Clinton), Fannie (Mae) and Freddie (Mac) are to blame for the financial crisis. The one from 2008. Bill wanted everyone to have a house. So he said to Fannie and Freddie: Don’t be so strict with the money. Bill always used to have a Labrador with him. He wouldn’t have allowed that.

He says the other people are right. They say it’s much more complicated. And a lot of mistakes were made with houses everywhere. It’s all the same to me. I don’t even have a doghouse.

Source: Dissenting Statement of Commissioner Keith Hennessey, Commis­sioner Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Vice Chairman Bill Thomas. In: FCIC (publ.), The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report – Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, January 2011, pages 411–440, here page 415.

What’s great: Putting a lot of things next to each other. For comparison. You repeat the form. And change the content. That’s called Small Multiples. The name is from Edward.

Important: The scale has to be comparable. By using an index, for example. You can omit what’s redundant. Here they omitted the superfluous labeling.

The German newspaper Die Welt showed changes in sales. Of the top 500 German companies. From 1995 to 2010. In annual growth rates. Do you see sales? I don’t. Is the situation after the crisis like it was before? Hang on. I’ll get my pocket calculator.*

Change in sales since 1995. In percent.
Source: Die Welt, 2011–06–20, page 11, Welt online, 2011–06–24, Figure 2.

I get dizzy looking at percentage mountains. Look. This is how the sales really changed.

Redesign: Me.

You can still annotate the percentage change. Note: Lines are developments. As is growth in percent. Lines above growth in percent is drawn annotations instead of an annotated drawing.

* If 2008 is 100, deduct 8 percent. Makes 92. Then add 11.8 percent. 92 x 0.118 = 10.9. Addition: 92 + 10.9 = 102.9. Ah!

Vodafone compared its subsidiaries. How quickly they have grown. In the regions around the world. There is only one subsidiary in the US. It was still compared though. But what with? Looks rather amusing. Single column.

Sales growth fiscal 2008/2009 (left) and 2009/2010 (right).
Source: Vodafone Group Plc Annual Reports 31 March 2009, page 11, and 31 March 2010, page 11.

I see: The graphic designer was stumped. Everything had to look uniform. What could he do? Use a global scale. Then everything is all right again. And one column is by itself but no longer lonely.

No more lonely columns in the 2010/2011 Annual Report, but amusing suggestions. Write whether it was “growth” or “decrease” afterwards. Then you’re not negative anywhere.