Bella consults » Musings

Kicklines

Bella — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 17:23:30 +0000

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
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
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.

Bad, better, banking

Bella — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:23:48 +0000

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.

Columncirclelined

Bella — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:23:29 +0000

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.

Front pages for the index

Bella — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 19:23:11 +0000

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.

More is less

Bella — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 15:36:32 +0000

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.

William’s pie

Bella — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:21:04 +0000

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

Bella — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:23:16 +0000

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.

The outside legend

Bella — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:36:46 +0000

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.

When blue doesn’t mean cold

Bella — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:16:05 +0000

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.

Vive la Diffrance

Bella — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:03:39 +0000

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.