Bella consults

Another fashion among information designers: geo-graphs without geo-info. Since I am a European Union dog, I know where Great Britain and Spain are. I sniff around for geographical relationships. More Diesel in the North? More in the South? Any regional influence? Something striking in German speaking countries? Or French? More mountains = more Diesel? More winter = less Diesel?

No, nothing.

New car registrations in Europe – 53.6 % of the 14.8 million new car registrations in Western Europe have been equipped with Diesel engines (2007). Largest Diesel market is Germany.

Note! The most noble purpose of a graphic: Show a (presumed) causal relationship. You use a map? Then your reader believes you think of a geographical issue.

My antidote to deco-geo as always: a pretty table, good to read, sortable, no problems with labeling, no Fizzel-Fazzel, no legend, no decoding. Wonderful.

Source: Graphic ams, 14/2008, p. 66

Today the 24 hours of Le Mans end. Many cars raced around in circles for very long. Me too. With my eyes. In the journal Auto Motor Sport (issue 13, June 5th, 2008, inlay p. 6–19). Data for Audi on page 10. Data for Peugeot on page 12. I keep on skimming back and forth. Then wham: paw on top and both tables are where they belong: side by side.

Now its making me real dizzy. Two zebras. One starts its gallop with grey the other with white.

The eye combines identical things. It hops from grey to grey and from white to white. The eye presumes meaning. But there is none. Besides that: low contrast, bad to read.

From the chart I read that from 1999 till last year the number of passangers increased to  2.2 bn. During the same period there have been lately per 1 million flights  0.75 total write-offs for airplanes. The German journal “Der SPIEGEL” sticks to rule 13 vor demolishing charts: Embellish whatever you want to say with numbers that tell a different story!

In the text SPIEGEL says: For the first time since 1998 (yes!) there are more total write-offs than the year before. “Flying is secure but starts to become insecure is the statistic’s story. And some flight experts see a dangerous new trend”. I never fly. I am only interested in graphs. That should look like that:

The difference between national/international is ignored by the author, so we don’t need it. Scale and guiding lines don’t help either. Values all the more. AND INCLUDE THE MESSAGE. Not bad.

(Chart: SPIEGEL 22/2008, p. 147, Redesign: ME)

Many cut axes just because of Excel. And go to charting hell. Because when you cut you distort. And when you distort you lie. At least with your graph. The graphical change in your data is no longer proportional to the change in values. He explains it quite well with a demolished graph from the SportAuto magazine. Here is a positive example. From the German newspaper “Die ZEIT”. This newspaper is off the mark sometimes, too.

Die ZEIT, 2008–04–30, p. 37, market share of Deutsche Post (left) and number of letters in Germany in billions (right)

All my rules are observed. Time runs from left to right. Scale starts at zero. The graph is proportional to its values. No exaggeration. No gadgets. No unnecessary percentage signs. Letters in billions, not in single pieces.

In the same issue another good graph. Structure is shown top-down. Labeling where it belongs: next to the columns. At least for the values. I would have left out the series “andere” (“others”). The dots, too.

Die ZEIT, 2008–04–30, p. 78, academics in the automotive sector, for automobile manufacturers and suppliers

The day before yesterday Rolf and I raged again. We took apart annual reports of large corporate groups. We made fun of tachometers. We showed how charts lie. We established rules. We defined standards. Some of the rules are in the example. Time runs from left to right. Only structure is shown top-down. We don’t use funny patterns. We label directly. We never label twice. We avoid legends and scales.

Charts show profits (Gewinne) of TUI AG, a major German company for tourism (Touristik, red), shipping (Schifffahrt, blue), and logistics.

The eye cannot sort colors into a ranking. It only works with hues. That is why most colored graphs are hard to read. Hue needs a continuous measure (€, cm, km/h, etc.). Normally. An exception: in the German newspaper “Welt am Sonntag”.

Welt am Sonntag, 2008–03–16, p.6

The strength of the new left-wing party in Germany is a discrete measure (Governing party, second most party, etc.). Still the idea of hues works. Great. Apart from that: beautiful Bavaria. The states to the right (”Sonntagsfrage Landtagswahl”, opinion poll for state elections) should be sorted. According to the share of the left-wing party.

Appetite always signals which piece of the pie is biggest. Always? Sort the pieces. How long did it take?

Sort the bars. How long did it take? Values are the same in both cases.

Eric has the same example. But while scaling the bars he was tricked by Excel.

Guess what the circular area represents. And?

Its even worse in Excel. You can use the diameter to show the value.

It’s enough to drive a person mad.

His day was ruined already. His beloved SportAuto newspaper had graphically demolished 500 yards of safety fence. I wanted to comfort him and skimmed through the paper. Issue seven 2006. Insiders know. Ooh…

Page 102 in the same issue: Formula One lap times from two seasons. Smaller engines yet faster again. Very interesting comparison. Good data. Good legend. Beautiful Evidence.

But the chart: a total loss. Reason: Gross negligence. On the right side: That’s how it should have looked like. The two Grand Prix which are not comparable (rain in Australia, new race track in Imola) are left out. During the race they have been faster twice and slower three times. Just the opposite for the training.

In the last two issues of SportAuto: not one chart at all. Good.

The German Newspaper “Die Süddeutsche” uses graphic tables in its online edition. They show positive and negative deviations. In the same direction. Here, they always quarrel about that. Pro: It’s easy to compare absolute values. It saves space. Contra: You have to learn it first. And you need color.

Stripes are a la mode. No, no, no – forbidden! They emphasize where there is nothing to emphasize. Get rid of them. Lean is beautiful. This goes for bars, too. Just 9 pixels high instead of 14. The idea of graphs in tables is that of wordlike graphics. Graphs as large as a word. Bars don’t need to be larger than the text around them.

Know what: Sparklines are missing, too. They are the archetype of wordlike graphics. Read their pattern (“SAP came back from a deep fall and now drifts sideways”) or segment by segment (“VW dropped, went sideways, climbed steep, dropped very fast, climbed very steep, dropped again, climbed ever steeper…”). They offer information otherwise unavailable. To be precise: the table had 20 values, now has 440 values. Information density has increased by a factor of 22.

P.S. The sparklines show values from 2007–12–28 to 2008–02–28. You might dispute scaling, e.g. here.

In real life, the bad always win. That’s why we have the movies. In movies it’s the good who win. So in mine. The graceful heroine defeats the mean chart junkie. After severe struggle. Nerve-wracking. Many special effects. A true blog buster.

To start the film, click on the image. To restart, please reload this page.

Thanks Emil! Not too bad a graphic. Color is used as an attribute of the object in question. Better done than this one.

Varnish reflects. Steel sheets are bended. Unnecessary. White for “overall” is not the same as for “luxury”.

I don’t like the sorting. Descending per class. You see what is important per class. But I am more interested in differences between classes. Compare the overall statistics to the different segments.

White is trendy. How does it establish itself? I put it first in my version. And I only sort once. For overall. Sorting is constant for all classes.

But one might argue about that.

I have to curse the Financial Times once more. That is how you need to show stock quotes:

Here: even more stock quotes with sparklines. And up-to date. Mostly.

Or is anyone interested in the “news” that the last day was up while twenty days before that where down?

I have cancelled all my daily newspapers.

Stock markets are so exciting for the Financial Times Deutschland. Either its all bullish or altogether bearish. Every day anew. Nothing for investors with cardiac insufficiency who happen to miss their glasses.

This is the same level as for the regional newspaper Nürnberger Nachrichten. They have two angles only, too.

For sensitive souls like me an arrow signals a trend. The steeper the more. A trend is easy to calculate and visualize:

* nt = “no trend”

Business charts are losers. Its only good luck if they work at all. He has shown some basic problems of them. With mine here, you need more brains than luck to find the truth.

Each series increases with the same amount per month. The first increases by 5, the second by 25 and the third by 30. All increase with the same relative dynamic. From January to February by 50 %, next months by 33 %, then 25, 20, 17, 14, 13, 11, 10, 9, 8 %.

The eye is sure to see something different. The increase of the bottom most series seems dull compared to the top most. And even a difference in dynamics between the two top most series appears to be plausible.

All wrong.

Sparklines are much better suited. They present the first series as 65, the second as 325 and the third as 390. More general: Want to compare different time series? Then scale them individually. It doesn’t work in one single chart.

No rule without an exception. I did find that one through Bill. A climber can use cracks to secure himself. You need a cam of the right size for that. Modern ones are based on eccentric panels and are high-tech.

Does the cam fit the crack? Look at the traffic light color. Green holds, yellow should hold while the next size would be better. Red doesn’t hold.

Climbing is easier than controlling an enterprise.