Kicklines

Sunday, January 15th, 2012 - by Bella

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

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

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.

Bad, better, banking

Friday, December 30th, 2011 - by Bella

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.
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.
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.

Columncirclelined

Thursday, December 15th, 2011 - by Bella

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, debt level). Source: Die Welt, 2011-12-07, page 5.
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.

Front pages for the index

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011 - by Bella

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.

Financial Times Deutschland Neue Zürcher Zeitung Nürnberger Nachrichten Nürnberger Zeitung Rheinische Post

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.

Handelsblatt

International Herald Tribune Süddeutsche Zeitung

Wall Street Journal

Die Welt

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.

More is less

Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 - by Bella

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.
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.

William’s pie

Sunday, October 30th, 2011 - by Bella

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.

Pick just a gram

Saturday, October 15th, 2011 - by Bella

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.

Troubled Waters
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.

The outside legend

Friday, September 30th, 2011 - by Bella

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 analysis. - Source: http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article13616521/Was-die-jungen-Menschen-heute-wirklich-wollen.html and Welt kompakt, 2011-09-21, page 23.
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.

The data from the consumer study as a graphical table. By me.
Redesign: me.

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

When blue doesn’t mean cold

Thursday, September 15th, 2011 - by Bella

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.

Official warnings on the Deutscher Wetterdienst website

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

Deutscher Wetterdienst's warning map with 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.

Vive la Diffrance

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 - by Bella

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.

Barfoot

Monday, August 15th, 2011 - by Bella

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.

Propellogram

Saturday, July 30th, 2011 - by Bella

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
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
Your enterprise

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

The more the merrier

Friday, July 15th, 2011 - by Bella

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.

The United States was one of many countries to experience rapid house price growth: House Price Appreciation in Selected Countries. - Source: Dissenting Statement of Commissioner Keith Hennessey, Commissioner Douglas Holtz-Eakin, and Vice Chairman Bill Thomas. In: The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (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.
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.

Percent age

Thursday, June 30th, 2011 - by Bella

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.*

Changes in sales since 1995. - Source: Die Welt, 2011-06-20, page 11, Welt online, http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article13439933/Deutsche-Top-500-machen-die-Krise-mehr-als-wett.html, 2011-06-24, Figure 2.
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!

You can’t stand on one leg

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 - by Bella

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.