4 ms·

Can I just point out how much I hate those sand charts? You can only tell what the bottom most variable is doing. How big is the AMD segment when intel was r

Can I just point out how much I hate those sand charts? You can only tell what the bottom most variable is doing. How big is the AMD segment when intel was rapidly rising? You can't tell because slope hides line width. Want to know the trajectory of the other small players? Too bad. Don't use sand charts kids.

mruts 7y ago
Yeah I can here to say this. It's almost impossible to actually figure out what's going on
nessus42 7y ago
> Don't use sand charts kids. And what would you use as an alternative? It would take a LOT of bars to display this information during the 90s as a grouped bar chart.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > And what would you use as an alternative? Non-cumulative line charts. As usually is the answer to that question. As a bonus, you can break line charts by line, and you can zoom parts of it.
  - nessus42 7y ago
    > Non-cumulative line charts. I suppose. But a chart with 23 different lines is quite difficult to read in my experience. I.e., visually distinguishing that many lines from each other is not easy.
    - marcosdumay 7y ago
      A chart with 23 different series is hard to read in any format. That's why being able to break it down by line is good.
      - nessus42 7y ago
        I can see all 23 trends in the sand chart at least. 23 lines on a line chart would be nothing but visual noise to me. I can barely parse the line charts on TIOBE which have only 10 lines.
nine_k 7y ago
Stacked chart makes sense here, because the sum is constant. What does not make sense is slanted lines; they draw different, slanted shapes that don't convey information. Instead, a stacked bar chart would be appropriate. It's also hard to offer so many distinct saturated colors, and color + pattern does not work all that well for small slivers like IBM 3090. A palette of appropriately contrasting colors (different hues, intensities, and saturations) would work better.
- souprock 7y ago
  That would still be a mess, in mostly the same way. All it does is emphasize that the values have a coarse 1-year sampling rate. The real mistake is that the most rapidly-changing values should have been in the middle, with the slowly-changing values at both top and bottom. This would help align the values from one sample to the next, making them easier to follow across the chart.
twic 7y ago
Sand charts are just pie charts rotated through hyperspace, and therefore bad.

mruts 7y ago

Yeah I can here to say this. It's almost impossible to actually figure out what's going on

nessus42 7y ago

> Don't use sand charts kids. And what would you use as an alternative? It would take a LOT of bars to display this information during the 90s as a grouped bar chart.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
marcosdumay 7y ago
> And what would you use as an alternative? Non-cumulative line charts. As usually is the answer to that question. As a bonus, you can break line charts by line, and you can zoom parts of it.
- nessus42 7y ago
  > Non-cumulative line charts. I suppose. But a chart with 23 different lines is quite difficult to read in my experience. I.e., visually distinguishing that many lines from each other is not easy.
  - marcosdumay 7y ago
    A chart with 23 different series is hard to read in any format. That's why being able to break it down by line is good.
    - nessus42 7y ago
      I can see all 23 trends in the sand chart at least. 23 lines on a line chart would be nothing but visual noise to me. I can barely parse the line charts on TIOBE which have only 10 lines.

nine_k 7y ago

Stacked chart makes sense here, because the sum is constant. What does not make sense is slanted lines; they draw different, slanted shapes that don't convey information. Instead, a stacked bar chart would be appropriate. It's also hard to offer so many distinct saturated colors, and color + pattern does not work all that well for small slivers like IBM 3090. A palette of appropriately contrasting colors (different hues, intensities, and saturations) would work better.

souprock 7y ago
That would still be a mess, in mostly the same way. All it does is emphasize that the values have a coarse 1-year sampling rate. The real mistake is that the most rapidly-changing values should have been in the middle, with the slowly-changing values at both top and bottom. This would help align the values from one sample to the next, making them easier to follow across the chart.

twic 7y ago

Sand charts are just pie charts rotated through hyperspace, and therefore bad.