Archive for April, 2009

Competent with media

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

It’s the school’s fault. They say so. But not here: most information designers create junk charts when using areas. In 7th grade kids learn how it is right and wrong. It makes them competent with media.

Flächengrafiken in der 7. Klasse
Lambacher Schweizer: Mathematik für Gymnasien 7, p. 122. (click for translation)

Teachers have their book with solutions. On page 81 it says:

left: essentially a column chart – one car symbol represents 10,000 cars; reasonable
right: length and height increase by 66 %; perception is distorted, because the area is doubled

Now, I wish more competent media to all kids competent with media.

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Listen to the pattern II

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Johannes Kreidler gives time series a sound. I did that two years ago. In fact, I copied it from him*.

I guess Johannes wants to make fun of the crisis. Businesses take this very seriously. Your human ear is a lot faster than your eye. The eyes see what the ears have already heard. Such as a ranking with one high, some middle and a lot of small values. A very characteristic sound pattern. Possibly irritating. But that is good. You think about it.

This is the sound of some of the data from his video without fun:

Lehman Brothers

General Motors

Microsoft

My old sparklines with new data:

Click on the speaker symbol to hear the crisis.

* Source: Bissantz, Nicolas: Innovative Produkte: DeltaMiner. In: WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK 43 (2001) 1, pp. 77–80.

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