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The axis should start at 0 degrees, not 53. The 3 dimensionality distorts it as the orange bars slightly angle to the left and makes 2012 look much bigger in re

The axis should start at 0 degrees, not 53. The 3 dimensionality distorts it as the orange bars slightly angle to the left and makes 2012 look much bigger in relation to the other bars. If you actually plot all the hottest years on a 2d bar chart starting from 0, it gives a much clearer picture of climate change while still revealing that 2012 was indeed the hottest year on record..

capkutay 13y ago
Also (this may be my personal opinion), but I think people are used to seeing the x-axis encode time. That visualization makes it look like its slowly getting hotter year after year if you don't pay attention to the labels.
- dgesang 13y ago
  visualization rule #1: read the labels
dragonwriter 13y ago
> The axis should start at 0 degrees, not 53. If its showing relative magnitude of change, 53 degrees is better than 0. Whether how much farther this is from other "hot" years than they are from each other is a key point is at least debatable. For any purpose for which a zero is needed (which doesn't include showing magnitude of change), for temperature 0 degrees F (which presumably this is -- a real problem with this is that it just specifies degrees, which is ambiguous) is just as arbitrary and inappropriate as 53 degrees F; if you are doing a visualization for which it is important to show a meaningful zero, you'd actually want absolute zero (0K). But for most things related to climate change, there's no reason for "zero" as the baseline. There's certainly purposes for which a meaningful baseline other than 0K or 53F would be appropriate -- what that baseline would be depends on the purpose.
Sprint 13y ago
I vehemently disagree that 0 should be the baseline. That would make absolutely no sense for this plot. I would use something like the average or median of the relevant temperatures as baseline. Using 0 as baseline gives you huge columns and does not highlight the big step at all. I would rather have relative value changes to the lowest temperature I chose to display, so in this case: 0 0.12 0.33 0.50 0.51 1.49 3D columns are bad of course, but that is neglible.

capkutay 13y ago

Also (this may be my personal opinion), but I think people are used to seeing the x-axis encode time. That visualization makes it look like its slowly getting hotter year after year if you don't pay attention to the labels.

dgesang 13y ago
visualization rule #1: read the labels

dragonwriter 13y ago

> The axis should start at 0 degrees, not 53. If its showing relative magnitude of change, 53 degrees is better than 0. Whether how much farther this is from other "hot" years than they are from each other is a key point is at least debatable. For any purpose for which a zero is needed (which doesn't include showing magnitude of change), for temperature 0 degrees F (which presumably this is -- a real problem with this is that it just specifies degrees, which is ambiguous) is just as arbitrary and inappropriate as 53 degrees F; if you are doing a visualization for which it is important to show a meaningful zero, you'd actually want absolute zero (0K). But for most things related to climate change, there's no reason for "zero" as the baseline. There's certainly purposes for which a meaningful baseline other than 0K or 53F would be appropriate -- what that baseline would be depends on the purpose.

Sprint 13y ago

I vehemently disagree that 0 should be the baseline. That would make absolutely no sense for this plot. I would use something like the average or median of the relevant temperatures as baseline. Using 0 as baseline gives you huge columns and does not highlight the big step at all. I would rather have relative value changes to the lowest temperature I chose to display, so in this case: 0 0.12 0.33 0.50 0.51 1.49 3D columns are bad of course, but that is neglible.