From https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-madrid-built-its-metro-cheaply/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-madrid-built-its-metro-... contrast Madrid's trai

From https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-madrid-built-its-metro-cheaply/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-madrid-built-its-metro-... contrast Madrid's train stations, copy and pasted as much as possible, vs London's, where each has its own interesting and complex architecture. The article claims simple, consistent Madrid stations were easier to build. Idk if it's true or not, but it's an appealing argument that architects are interested in architectural uniqueness and complexity which adds costs. Similarly, the data viz architect sort of assumes more complex visualizations would be helpful if the public wasn't so phone addicted and inattentive: "some data stories are just too complex and nuanced to be aggregated in bar charts and line charts. Surely, they’d be curious about more complex visualizations" ...well where's the discussion of if visualization complexity is actually good for data stories? If everyone knows how to read a bar chart and a line graph, that's a point in favor of standard copy and paste visualization. The one case where imo fancy visualizations actually help is maps. Not only is the example of facebook friendships in 2010 cool, a world map really is the best way to show where people/connections are (ofc maybe it's just a heatmap ie https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ idk if they divided by how many people live there but still cool). So there are probably lots of stories a map visualization helps tell by showing where stuff is. But yeah in general I felt like the article spoke to data viz only as art to wow data connoisseurs. There was no defense of why complex stories getting a new data format each time conveys information better than standard bar chart/line graph.