3 ms·

100+ pie charts? That sounds even worse than just one pie chart -- though given H and He make up ~98% of everything, squeezing the data into one pie chart woul

by Jedd 6y ago

100+ pie charts? That sounds even worse than just one pie chart -- though given H and He make up ~98% of everything, squeezing the data into one pie chart would make it extra-awful.

willis936 6y ago
I don’t see how it would be awful. It would give the same information but also show how much matter is from each source. Vector graphics eliminate resolution concerns. Just zoom past hydrogen if it’s taking up 98% of the screen. Edit: to be clear: the reason it would “be cool to see” is because it’s visualizing data. It’s what graphs are for. I don’t care about the pies of the pie charts. I care about being able to see the relative quantity of the colors and to also see the distribution of discrete element quantities in one image. There are many ways to do this. If you have a better suggestion, suggest it.
- Jedd 6y ago
  So you want to see the ratio of origin of all elements, but grouped by element? (one chart per element I think you said originally). This is what the image in TFA actually has -- each element has one or more colours within its rectangle, and I assume that the proportion of each colour reflects relative provenance for that particular element.
  - willis936 6y ago
    Yes, but the information of the abundance of each element is not present. If that information was added into this plot then the relative amount of each color would be the relative abundance of the origin of elements.
    - Jedd 6y ago
      I think it'd be a fairly difficult breakdown to represent usefully, given four elements (H, He, O, C) make up 99.4% of all matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...
      - willis936 6y ago
        I don’t see how an extreme distribution makes the representation less useful. See: vector images. In fact, the large disparity is relative abundance of elements is why it would be even more useful. A periodic table says next to nothing about how much matter has gone through nucleosynthesis since the big bang. You could show that with one pie chart, but then you lose the information about the distribution of masses. You haven’t given a good reason why it wouldn’t be useful to have all three pieces of information in one graph.
        Jedd 6y ago
        Well, firstly, I look forward to seeing your visualisation for these data - I'm curious how you can portray these 3 dimensions. Secondly, you originally wrote: > It would be cool to see this made into a series of pie charts (one for each element) so now when you say: > You haven’t given a good reason why it wouldn’t be useful to have all three pieces of information in one graph. it feels like I'm not the person who needs to show this set of 100+ charts / one graph.
        willis936 6y ago
        You left out the second half of my short first comment: >where the relative area of each pie chart is dictated by the relative abundance of each element I suggest reviewing HN's comment guidelines. They're the only reason anyone comes here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        Jedd 6y ago
        Oh, I expect people come to HN to see interesting things. "It would be nice to ..." may not fit into that category. Anyway, as I understand it, on an A4 infographic, you'd be expecting to see one pie chart (H) taking up 3/4 of the page. Almost all the other 1/4 of the page would be taken up by an He circle. Then you'd have a (still recognisable as a circle) for Oxygen, at about 6mm wide, the next would be 4mm wide for Carbon. After that I'd guess we're at ~1mm pie charts for Neon, Iron, Nitrogen. After the first 7 pie charts, each subsequent pie chart would be the size of a pixel (or sub-mm on a printed page). So it'd look like a hundred or so tiny dots. Have I misunderstand the visualisation you're describing?

by Jedd 6y ago

100+ pie charts? That sounds even worse than just one pie chart -- though given H and He make up ~98% of everything, squeezing the data into one pie chart would make it extra-awful.

willis936 6y ago

I don’t see how it would be awful. It would give the same information but also show how much matter is from each source. Vector graphics eliminate resolution concerns. Just zoom past hydrogen if it’s taking up 98% of the screen. Edit: to be clear: the reason it would “be cool to see” is because it’s visualizing data. It’s what graphs are for. I don’t care about the pies of the pie charts. I care about being able to see the relative quantity of the colors and to also see the distribution of discrete element quantities in one image. There are many ways to do this. If you have a better suggestion, suggest it.

Jedd 6y ago
So you want to see the ratio of origin of all elements, but grouped by element? (one chart per element I think you said originally). This is what the image in TFA actually has -- each element has one or more colours within its rectangle, and I assume that the proportion of each colour reflects relative provenance for that particular element.
- willis936 6y ago
  Yes, but the information of the abundance of each element is not present. If that information was added into this plot then the relative amount of each color would be the relative abundance of the origin of elements.
  - Jedd 6y ago
    I think it'd be a fairly difficult breakdown to represent usefully, given four elements (H, He, O, C) make up 99.4% of all matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elements#Universe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_the_chemical_elem...
    - willis936 6y ago
      I don’t see how an extreme distribution makes the representation less useful. See: vector images. In fact, the large disparity is relative abundance of elements is why it would be even more useful. A periodic table says next to nothing about how much matter has gone through nucleosynthesis since the big bang. You could show that with one pie chart, but then you lose the information about the distribution of masses. You haven’t given a good reason why it wouldn’t be useful to have all three pieces of information in one graph.
      - Jedd 6y ago
        Well, firstly, I look forward to seeing your visualisation for these data - I'm curious how you can portray these 3 dimensions. Secondly, you originally wrote: > It would be cool to see this made into a series of pie charts (one for each element) so now when you say: > You haven’t given a good reason why it wouldn’t be useful to have all three pieces of information in one graph. it feels like I'm not the person who needs to show this set of 100+ charts / one graph.
        willis936 6y ago
        You left out the second half of my short first comment: >where the relative area of each pie chart is dictated by the relative abundance of each element I suggest reviewing HN's comment guidelines. They're the only reason anyone comes here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
        Jedd 6y ago
        Oh, I expect people come to HN to see interesting things. "It would be nice to ..." may not fit into that category. Anyway, as I understand it, on an A4 infographic, you'd be expecting to see one pie chart (H) taking up 3/4 of the page. Almost all the other 1/4 of the page would be taken up by an He circle. Then you'd have a (still recognisable as a circle) for Oxygen, at about 6mm wide, the next would be 4mm wide for Carbon. After that I'd guess we're at ~1mm pie charts for Neon, Iron, Nitrogen. After the first 7 pie charts, each subsequent pie chart would be the size of a pixel (or sub-mm on a printed page). So it'd look like a hundred or so tiny dots. Have I misunderstand the visualisation you're describing?