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This is a fascinating article, but I'm bookmarking it for the unreadable graphs. It will be a great example for future presentations.

Stratoscope 6y ago
That is an interesting insight. I would like to learn more about making graphs that communicate well. Can you share some specifics about how these graphs are unreadable, and how they can be improved?
- IshKebab 6y ago
  Uhm... did you look at them? They both use very very similar shades of blue for all of the series which makes them impossible to distinguish. The second graph is a little better but even in that one the very similarly coloured blue lines cross each other so you have to really look closely to figure out which is which.
  - zwp 6y ago
    The second graph links to datawrapper.de. The shades of blue appear to be the default palette in that application. It wasn't a stylistic choice "blue because fish". I tried one of datawrapper's sample data sets, "Gender pay gap" and added a couple of extra columns. The resulting line graph has four shades of blue. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/g98Jd/1/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/g98Jd/1/ (There are "base color" and "customize colors" buttons so the author could have changed this. Seems like a nice little app).
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    Yes. They both could have been better but both communicate their key message. I guess the point is ... I've seen many, many examples of worse graphs, graphs where the point was obscured or graphs that were deliberately misleading; so I'm trying to figure out how these two are worthy of appearing in a presentation.
    - IshKebab 6y ago
      Hilariously bad colour choices. If you're talking about colour these are good examples of how not to do it.
- enriquto 6y ago
  the first graph is completely useless, how can you distinguish between all these similar shades of light blue?
  - zwp 6y ago
    If you're on a non-touchscreen device then there is a hover-over pop-up with the fish name and tonnage caught. That still doesn't cut it: there are 18 fish in the graph key but at first glance the graph has around half that number. The others can be seen if you zoom right in but it's still not easy to hover over the pixel-wide slivers of similar blue. That said I don't think the tonnage details are the point of this graph but rather a more general message: "Tuna fishing increased 6-fold over 65 years, skipjack makes up most of the increase". I think it communicates this message well. Perhaps more "infographic" than "graph"?
marzell 6y ago
This is nitpicky. There's 2 graphs; the second one is totally readable... The first one gets it's main point across just fine.
Ensorceled 6y ago
> unreadable graphs Can you explain your issues with the second graph, it seems perfect fine to me. The first graph is merely "meh" ... the two key data points for this article are readily apparent: over all harvesting of tuna is increasing and the percentage of shipjack in that harvest is also increasing. What message was this graph supposed to communicate that it did not?

Stratoscope 6y ago

That is an interesting insight. I would like to learn more about making graphs that communicate well. Can you share some specifics about how these graphs are unreadable, and how they can be improved?

IshKebab 6y ago
Uhm... did you look at them? They both use very very similar shades of blue for all of the series which makes them impossible to distinguish. The second graph is a little better but even in that one the very similarly coloured blue lines cross each other so you have to really look closely to figure out which is which.
- zwp 6y ago
  The second graph links to datawrapper.de. The shades of blue appear to be the default palette in that application. It wasn't a stylistic choice "blue because fish". I tried one of datawrapper's sample data sets, "Gender pay gap" and added a couple of extra columns. The resulting line graph has four shades of blue. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/g98Jd/1/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/g98Jd/1/ (There are "base color" and "customize colors" buttons so the author could have changed this. Seems like a nice little app).
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  Yes. They both could have been better but both communicate their key message. I guess the point is ... I've seen many, many examples of worse graphs, graphs where the point was obscured or graphs that were deliberately misleading; so I'm trying to figure out how these two are worthy of appearing in a presentation.
  - IshKebab 6y ago
    Hilariously bad colour choices. If you're talking about colour these are good examples of how not to do it.
enriquto 6y ago
the first graph is completely useless, how can you distinguish between all these similar shades of light blue?
- zwp 6y ago
  If you're on a non-touchscreen device then there is a hover-over pop-up with the fish name and tonnage caught. That still doesn't cut it: there are 18 fish in the graph key but at first glance the graph has around half that number. The others can be seen if you zoom right in but it's still not easy to hover over the pixel-wide slivers of similar blue. That said I don't think the tonnage details are the point of this graph but rather a more general message: "Tuna fishing increased 6-fold over 65 years, skipjack makes up most of the increase". I think it communicates this message well. Perhaps more "infographic" than "graph"?

marzell 6y ago

This is nitpicky. There's 2 graphs; the second one is totally readable... The first one gets it's main point across just fine.

Ensorceled 6y ago

> unreadable graphs Can you explain your issues with the second graph, it seems perfect fine to me. The first graph is merely "meh" ... the two key data points for this article are readily apparent: over all harvesting of tuna is increasing and the percentage of shipjack in that harvest is also increasing. What message was this graph supposed to communicate that it did not?