In 1998, Neil Postman wrote critically about the Age of Information. If there are children starving in the world—and there are—it is not because of insufficient information. [...] If there is violence on our streets, it is not because we have insufficient information. If women are abused, if divorce and pornography and mental illness are increasing, none of it has anything to do with insufficient … [Read more...]
10 ways to mislead with data visualization
PolicyViz have published a useful article on errors you really need to avoid when creating data visualizations. … [Read more...]
Dutch giants
This chart crime made me afraid to visit Amsterdam. https://twitter.com/AdamSinger/status/1612124828114321410 I had to rework it to stop the nightmares. Phew. Everyone looks normal now. … [Read more...]
Percentages or proportions?
Don't store percentages. Normalize them as proportions and format them as percentages for display. If you are representing 20%, record it as 0.2, regardless of how you present this to the user (for input or output). Having one approach keeps it simple. … [Read more...]
Data storytelling
If you pay too much attention to social media these days, it appears that we're failing our clients if we don't present data as a narrative. Data storytelling is where it's at. Dataviz (data visualization) is so last year. This view does a disservice to both dataviz and data storytelling. It fails to appreciate the range of dataviz applications and, by watering down the definition of data … [Read more...]