4 ms·

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/wik

by 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?
      - willis936 6y ago
        You seem to miss the point of HN, or in fact the very concept of communities in general. Why do you think the graphic would be printed? If printed, why would it be smaller than 20 feet across? I am confused by these unreasonable assumptions.
        Jedd 6y ago
        Yes, quite. I certainly don't have your level of experience in HN and communities, so I appreciate your patience. In any case, it sounds like you have two things: a) an interest in having this visualisation, and b) access to all the tools & data needed to make it.

by Jedd 6y ago

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?
    - willis936 6y ago
      You seem to miss the point of HN, or in fact the very concept of communities in general. Why do you think the graphic would be printed? If printed, why would it be smaller than 20 feet across? I am confused by these unreasonable assumptions.
      - Jedd 6y ago
        Yes, quite. I certainly don't have your level of experience in HN and communities, so I appreciate your patience. In any case, it sounds like you have two things: a) an interest in having this visualisation, and b) access to all the tools & data needed to make it.