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

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.

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)

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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