Because it's Friday: Kittens, beware Tufte

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)

Comments

[Shane]

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!

[Brian]

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/

[David Smith]

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.

[Alain]

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.