While this chart of the steep decline in market capitalization of banks was certainly misleading -- making the diameter of the circle proportional to the value overemphasizes the comparison by area -- I was heartened by the comments that followed. Many, many readers pointed out the error. Some even cited Tufte. This is the kind of chart that not many years ago would have easily slid by without comment. The Financial Times even created and posted a corrected graph in a followup that still uses circles but at least gets the areas right. I'm sure given the data that R users could create an even better chart.
« Finding the Source | Main | Survey package updated to version 3.11 »
February 04, 2009
Graphic literacy improving?
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How about
this one ?
Posted by: Romain Francois | February 04, 2009 at 09:12
Nice one! The dotchart works much better, IMO.
(P.S. Fixed the link in your comment.)
Posted by: David Smith | February 04, 2009 at 09:29
Thanks for fixing the link. The graph has made it to the graph gallery.
Posted by: Romain Francois | February 04, 2009 at 12:48