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Edward Tufte has been a tireless promoter of good infographics, and he's even taken some controversial steps to rid the world of chartjunk. But now he's gone too far:
Then again, this chart from the Wall Street Journal could lead anyone to felinicide:
What's wrong with a simple bar chart, WSJ?
Mark Goetz: My New Wallpaper (via @sarahd23 and @statalgo)
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R for the Enterprise
Ha! I was so appalled by that WSJ chart. One of the worst parts of it: beyond the fact that it doesn't convey information effectively, it also presumably required more effort to make it that way than just using a bar chart!
Posted by: Shane | March 19, 2010 at 09:12
Note that the kitten poster is not created by Tufte
Click through reveals the source to be:
http://markandrewgoetz.com/blog/index.php/2009/11/my-new-wallpaper/
Posted by: Brian | March 19, 2010 at 12:13
Thanks Brian. To be clear, Tufte is not in the habit of killing kittens; as regular readers will know "Because it's Friday" posts often contain jokes (such as they are). I've updated the link with the source attribution.
Posted by: David Smith | March 19, 2010 at 12:26
The WSJ circle chart has one advantage: by using volume instead of height, it takes less vertical room to display highly variable data.
That is the only advantage I could see.
Posted by: Alain | March 30, 2010 at 11:42