A nifty flowchart from (@WstonesOxfordSt) – Waterstone’s Oxford Street twitter account.
(via @WstonesOxfordSt)
A nifty flowchart from (@WstonesOxfordSt) – Waterstone’s Oxford Street twitter account.
(via @WstonesOxfordSt)
John Pavlus over at FastCodeDesign.com has a fascinating article on the subject of whether ‘Infographics Can Save Morons From Themselves’. The essence of the piece is a discussion based on academic research from Darthmoth college which suggests (from the research abstract):
Graphical corrections are found to successfully reduce incorrect beliefs among potentially resistant subjects and to perform better than an equivalent textual correction
Political researchers Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler designed some experiments to test – as Pavlus puts it – ‘the efficacy of graphical “correctives” to inaccurate beliefs’
He goes on to say:
The authors suggest that conveying “counter-attitudinal information” (i.e., facts that directly contradict one’s beliefs on a subject like climate change, which the authors directly examined) graphically instead of textually simply provides less opportunity for counter-argument…
But there’s a big hole in this whole conceit. Just because people might be more psychologically inclined to accept infographics as “more objective” doesn’t mean that they actually are more objective. Graphic design is a language just like text, and it provides just as ample opportunity for obfuscation and distortion. The rub is that because graphics are so effective as communication tools, misleading graphics have the potential to be that much more dangerous as misinformation weapons.
It’s true that infographics have the potential to be more dangerous than simple text (see Megan McArdle’s recent article on Ending the Infographic plague), but the researchers are circumspect and not unequivocal in their conclusions. (How could they when you have examples of Fox News playing loose with their graphics, while stating the correct data). Instead, they say their results:
highlight the exciting possibility that graphical corrections can reduce misperceptions more effectively than text. However, the results underscore the psychological factors that make misperceptions so difficult to reduce…
And in conclusion (my emphasis):
Our results suggest that journalists writing stories about changes or trends in a measurable quantity where misperceptions are likely should consider including graphs in their stories.
So my conclusion from the research and subsequent discussion – us graphics to highlight trends or changes and you might, just might make things clearer and change opinions.
For more on where graphics can help and details of the experiments, check the research paper:
Opening the Political Mind? The effects of self-affirmation and graphical information on factual misperceptions.
In their 2007 research paper Towards A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management Ralph Lengler & Martin J. Eppler created a periodic table of 100 visualization methods. The paper abstract describes the research as “effort of defining and compiling existing visualization methods in order to develop a systematic overview based on the logic, look, and use of the periodic table of elements.”
They describe a Visualization method as:
a systematic, rule-based, external, permanent, and graphic representation that depicts information in a way that is conducive to acquiring insights, developing an elaborate understanding, or communicating experiences.
Visual-literacy.org have an interactive visualization of the table with a pop-up example of each visualization method upon mouse-over. It provides a fantastic framework for understanding and describing the multitude of visualization methods and styles available.
From the research paper:
The periodic table is constructed along two dimensions: Periods and groups. Of the five dimensions we deemed most relevant for a pragmatic classification of visualization methods, we found the dimension of complexity of visualization most fitting for “periods” and application area most fitting for “groups”.
As we classified the visualization methods along those two dimensions we also tried to organize them in a similar way. That means as you move down a column, you will find similar methods for similar purposes but getting more and more complex. This is an ordinal meas- ure within a group, meaning you will find in one period different amounts of complexity. This is for pragmatic reasons as we didn’t want to leave any empty spaces in the table. For example, a line chart is a more complex visualization method than a spectrogram (a single line having two extreme poles). On the other hand a tensor diagram is more complex than a spectrogram
The chart has the application area dimension (“groups”) into the following categories and distinguished them by background color:
The periodic table also puts the three other dimensions on top of the method symbol and used the following pictorial representations:
1. Task and Interaction: Depending on the task, visualization can emphasize certain aspects of the data.
2. Cognitive Processes: Visualization methods can help the user to articulate implicit knowledge (as in a visual metaphor) and to stimulate new thinking (like with a mindmap).
3. Represented Information: Structure or Process as a mechanism for representing data
The paper concludes with the underlying rational for structuring an explanation of the hundreds of visualization methods in a style similar to the periodic table:
With our table we do not mean to reveal the organizing principle of visualization methods, but we want to highlight the fact that there might not be only one appropriate visualization method for a given requirement. Rather, there is the potential of employing a combination of different methods to enhance the achieved results.
Our efforts in structuring the vast domain of visualization methods cannot be seen as a close adaptation of the peri- odic table of chemical elements. It is rather a functional, metaphoric homage to it. The choice of methods included as well as the order criteria cannot be considered exhaus- tive. Nevertheless, it does provide an overview over more than hundred useful visualization methods of great variety and by organizing them assists researchers and practitio- ners alike in choosing adequate visualization methods for their needs.
For more read the entire paper Towards A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management.
From idsgeek:
Crony capitalism – a capitalist economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials.
For information on how to stop this head over to rootstrikers.org.
(via lerockwell)
The BBC’s visualization below would be beautiful were it not so tragic. It’s a map visualizing traffic casualties between 1999 and 2010. Each light point on the map represents more than 2 million road collisions that resulted in a casualty; the brighter the light, the more frequently collisions occurred in that spot.
Along with the map, there is also a haunting time-lapse video animation of the crash data.
(via bbc.co.uk)
Yesterday, I posted a simple infographic to highlight the issues of correlation and causality in relation to online charts and graphs. At Bloomberg Business Week, Vali Chandrasekaran has just posted six infographics demonstrating how ridiculous things can get when you start confusing correlation and causation.
(via BusinessWeek)
One of the most basic rules in science and statistics is Correlation does not imply causation. As such, the correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other.
RauCreativity has put it simply with the problem and example below.
(via RauCreativity.com)
Daniel Waisberg over at Online Behavior has created a humorous infographic detailing the most popular types of charts and a description of personality types associated with each.
If you’re interested in hiding information use a Waterfall chart, but if you want to increase your probability of getting a raise use a simple Bar Chart!
(via Online-behaviur)