9 ms·

Why We Hate Infographics

120 points by cyrillevincey 13y ago

tokenadult 13y ago
The submitted article includes one section that begins, "Ever heard of the data-to-ink ratio? If so, skip this." But please don't skip that. That is an excellent visual illustration of how to remove "chartjunk" (Tufte's term) from a data graphic, vividly showing how much a chart can be improved by being simplified. Cute captioned photos are a dime a dozen, especially since websites for producing them for free popped up to feed some people's Facebook walls. Don't bother. Use a diagram when it really illustrates something, and write clearly the rest of the time. One of the strengths of the discussion on Hacker News is paragraphs of actual thoughtful text.
- hsuresh 13y ago
  Yup, i thought the animation was brilliant. Pretty much summed the blog post. The equivalent in HN is the wall of text - breaking down the message into paragraphs, and keeping the content crisp makes posts/comments a lot more readable. In fact, wouldn't data-to-ink ratio apply even for text?
- jakobe 13y ago
  I think that this animated GIF is actually very bad advice. 1) They remove axis labels, forcing the reader to infer the axis from context. 2) They remove the horizontal lines, making it harder to compare different values visually. 3) They remove tickmarks, so the reader no longer knows if the origin is at zero or not. 4) They add labels with 3 significant digits, which gives the reader a false sense of precision. Overall they arrive at a graphic that may be nicer to look at, but is functionally much worse than the original.
  - notacoward 13y ago
    I had pretty much the same reaction. Yeah, definitely remove backgrounds and shadows and anything that's redundant. That's great, the original was awful, but they took the minimization too far. What they ended up with was missing information and IMO wasn't as nice to look at as some of the intermediate forms had been either. The one part that's really tricky is color. I actually liked the colored version a bit better, even though it provided no extra information content. Sure, if you want to use color for only one value (bacon) as a highlight that makes sense, but more generally I think a little bit of appropriate color can help maintain attention.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    Much worse? or more in line with what most readers want: simplicity? The 3 significant digits is the raw full-precision data, if you want to do more with the graph than get a brief impression. This in contrast to having to infer an approximation by following lines to a coarse axis and visually interpolating the desired values. Providing this data obviates objections #2 & #3. Don't let the tickmarks, there or not, distract you from the zero. A favored lie in statistics is to conceal the lack (or off-the-chart) of zero, betting that the reader won't notice it having been dazzled by the dramatic angles on what (in many cases) is a rather flat data set. Default assumption should be the origin IS zero; if you're hiding the zero, ask yourself if you're really trying to lie to the reader. Marking the origin may provide plausible deniability, but most readers won't notice it - so act on truth, rather than concealing the lie in plain sight. Comparison should be as natural as the context & form of the graph makes appropriate. If it's not suitably obvious, reconsider the graph type. If the reader wants more accuracy, a graph may not be the best medium - and golly there's the raw data. The context should make the axis labels obvious and redundant. If it's not already obvious, reconsider whether the title or other commentary can be reworded to make it obvious. Of course, all this depends on what you're really trying to tell the reader, and what form follows that function. If tick marks or labels or origin value is necessary, include it ... but whatever isn't necessary, drop it.
josefresco 13y ago
I hate to be the one to bring this up, but the contrast between your body font color (and even heading font) and background is downright horrible. It could also be how the font is being rendered, it looks thin and broken up. For example the "t's" and "r's" and "l's" in the following sidebar text are almost invisible: "The data that makes your business tick is never more convincing than when it's put in context inside a story"
- rpc_was_taken 13y ago
  With Adblock it didn't even load the CSSs. And I might say, reading it in the default font over a white page improved the readability a lot. Maybe they should apply their own recomendations and reduce "CSS junk" on their site. ;)
- Mercutionario 13y ago
  Okay, we went back to plain helvetica for now, I agree myself I wasn't very happy with the way it rendered.
- vacri 13y ago
  It's ironic that an article fundamentalising on the ideal way to get your point across is so hard to read, on a page with so much visual noise.
darkxanthos 13y ago
One reason he gives is that there is too much data on the page. Tufte has said having a lot of data isnt the problem (humans are excellent at scanning images), terrible design is the problem. Since I suck at design though I tend to need to do simpler charts. :)
TheBiv 13y ago
...yet none of their points have what they say they love...it's all in images.
xerophtye 13y ago
I personally find vudlab's charts pretty cool. I first came across them in the Simpson's paradox article[1] and i really loved them because they let me EXPLORE the data. Yep, they're interactive! That gives a whole new prespective to the readers. [1] http://vudlab.com/simpsons/ http://vudlab.com/simpsons/
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- abbazabba 13y ago
  d3's interactivity > excel and tableau in terms of quality data visualization. anytime someone looks at a chart, they should be able to ask "but what happen's when x, y and z change?" being able to manipulate the data without forcing the audience to run calculations themselves should be the norm. it takes work, but i hope we get there someday.
  - cyrillevincey 13y ago
    That's exactly where we are heading. Data discovery made accessible to anyone via chart interactivity. Soon.
brey 13y ago
> in the early 90's, hipsters of that time decided that graphs weren't cool enough, and called them charts I'd always thought that was to not confuse with graph theory.
- tgb 13y ago
  The article appears to be a little confused on the historical use of words like chart and graph, so I wouldn't take anything they say seriously on that part. It's just a catchy introduction, presumably. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chart%2C+plot%2C+graph%2C+infographic&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chart%2C+plot%2...
  - ulisesrmzroche 13y ago
    Why should we take them seriously as a whole if they don't even know this basic history?
  - cyrillevincey 13y ago
    I'm referring to the actual use of those words in the business everyday life to refer to a business 'chart', not to the use of those words in general. Of course the words "graph", "chart" or "data visualization" did not suddenly pop up at specific moment in the recent history. In your analytics, "graph" might relate to graph theory, linguistic, or music.
nemesisj 13y ago
It struck me that the post on why we hate infographics vs. the product the company puts out (visualisations of various data sources) was a bit of a non sequitur but the product does seems interesting and I'll probably give it a go. A bit more on the actual topic of infographics (vs just data visualisation) would be a company that also "hates" them, but is putting out a tool that helps people build "living infographics". They're like the normal infographics we see, but they aren't static and you can actually interact and manipulate the data which turns them into both a marketing tool (outbound) and a market research tool (inbound). Check them out here: http://stipso.com/ http://stipso.com/
jimt67 13y ago
Given the vast amount of junky infographics, I generally agree with their philosophy. They do, however, seem to ignore some of the research on the value of chartjunk. Like this paper, which won a best paper award at CHI '10: http://hci.usask.ca/publications/view.php?id=173 http://hci.usask.ca/publications/view.php?id=173
- cscheid 13y ago
  And then there's this, about that paper: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2010/05/8-red-flags-about-the-useful-chartjunk-paper.html http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2010/05/8-red-flag... Edit: And this http://junkcharts.typepad.com/numbersruleyourworld/2010/05/more-questions-than-participants.html http://junkcharts.typepad.com/numbersruleyourworld/2010/05/m...
  - jimt67 13y ago
    There are other studies (e.g., http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6327282&abstractAccess=no&userType=inst http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6327... ) A Google Scholar search will turn up others...the HCI literature seems to prefer the term visual embellishments to chartjunk.
- danso 13y ago
  I'm inclined to believe their findings, in the same way that I'd agree putting a picture of Miley Cyrus as the lead art for a story about unemployment rates would make you notice and remember that one story more than other unemployment rate stories. Quick question on the paper's methodology...is 20 a big enough sample size?
  - jimt67 13y ago
    It may or it may not be...see: http://www.uvm.edu/~bbeckage/Teaching/DataAnalysis/AssignedPapers/Cohen_1990.pdf http://www.uvm.edu/~bbeckage/Teaching/DataAnalysis/AssignedP...
mcherm 13y ago
I want to take issue with one of their points. They link to an infographic on fuel sources and energy use from loveinfographics.com. Then they ask you to look at it for 10 seconds and ask they ask what you have learned. I might as well ask people (who don't speak Chinese) to run the author's article through Bablefish English > Chinese, remove all images, then read "Why We Hate Infographics" article carefully and tell what they learned. It would, of course, be a useless article, but that does not reflect badly on the article: it was never intended to be consumed that way! The infographic they link to is the kind of infographic that I find extremely valuable (and also quite difficult to create). A diagram which conveys a VERY significant amount of information in a very concise format. Looking at that graphic I can glean the following facts: * Gas and oil make up a little more than half of US fuel supplies. * Electricity is used roughly equally by residential, commercial, and industrial clients (well, slightly less for industrial). * I heat my home with fuel oil. Apparently I'm a minority in that, but not by an extreme amount: we fuel oil users make up maybe 5% of the usage (not the population). None of that information was a specific detail that the chart authors wanted to convey, so using less detailed methods would never have conveyed the information. A series of charts with numbers could have conveyed the information, but not in a form I could have processed with my brain (unless maybe I used it to build a chart like this). I want to defend complex data visualizations that convey large amounts of information in easily perceived ways. I still think the "infographics" that just just illustrate things with pretty pictures are stupid.
- ghaff 13y ago
  Ref: the simplify point. The famous (via Tufte) graphic of Napoleon's invasion of Russia (http://www.improving-visualisation.org/vis/id=205 http://www.improving-visualisation.org/vis/id=205) is widely cited as as a great example of conveying information useful and dramatically. If you accept this as an exemplar--you don't have to of course--it's anything but simple. Rather, it's a graphic that requires study but, given that study, offers up a great deal of information in return.
  - lmg643 13y ago
    Edward Tufte has a lot of interesting things to say about charts and data, more than i ever thought possible. This infographic article seems to borrow some of his ideas without even mentioning him. I would suggest folks read tufte's "the cognitive style of powerpoint." Lots of similar concepts in a short pamphlet. http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1 http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0... http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint
theorique 13y ago
I would have found this article easier to understand if it presented its points as an infographic.
- Mercutionario 13y ago
  Smooth.
hawleyal 13y ago
OP is raging at bad infographics.
ianstallings 13y ago
I hate infographics. Although I understand the need for an overview of a subject, I don't think it's a substitute for a meaty body of text. I feel that anytime a subject is processed and homogenized into a one page graphic that I'm selling myself short. They remind me of "talking points" you see on the "news". I'd rather just read a body of text and then give myself some leeway to discover more about the topic in my own way. I have the patience and willpower to truly discover some truths, instead of parroting a factoid from an infographic. I do like how they are being used to draw people into a topic, and I do understand how data scientists are redefining visualization, I just don't like to see a ton of them for no reason other than being trendy.
petenixey 13y ago
In the battle between information and graphics I feel that sadly, graphics have won.
pseut 13y ago
Ending an article on data presentation with an animated gif of a bar chart is... curious.
benologist 13y ago
Article misses the point of modern infographics, since back in the original Digg days they've just been carefully manufactured spam designed to suck up idiots, backlinks and traffic on social news sites. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_game_digg_using_infographics_voting/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_ga...
sailfast 13y ago
To the OP - nice points well condensed. Would love to see what your company does in more detail but it looks like your site's down - guessing traffic related from this post!
- cyrillevincey 13y ago
  Indeed, insane day. FYI the service is back up.
Intermernet 13y ago
I hate to be the guy who first mentions XKCD on an HN thread (I call it "Munroe's Law"), but there are some beautiful infographics from Randall... See http://halfblog.net/2013/01/22/infographics-of-xkcd/ http://halfblog.net/2013/01/22/infographics-of-xkcd/
taeric 13y ago
There is really only one reason I hate infographics. I can't do them. If I had a fraction of the skill displayed at xkcd or the like, I would love them. :)
jkscm 13y ago
At least bad visualizations can be funny: http://wtfviz.net http://wtfviz.net
chrisreichel 13y ago
Why we hate Why we hate (And why you should)
redact207 13y ago
Getting pretty tired of all these posts that are telling me what I should hate. It's just infographics. They're not a substitute for hard core analytics and they're not supposed to be. It's a designers spin on providing summary level data that sits somewhere between the words of design and analysis. If you want a quickly digestible, publishable bit of content, use infographics. If you want to provide more meat to your message, don't use them.
arocks 13y ago
Infographics sacrifice accuracy i.e. proportions, colors etc in favor of emotional appeal. Sometimes facts need to be packaged better for a greater impact. That's why they are primarily used for promotional rather than for reporting purposes.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > Infographics sacrifice accuracy i.e. proportions, colors etc in favor of emotional appeal. Sometimes facts need to be packaged better for a greater impact. That's why they are primarily used for promotional rather than for reporting purposes. I think you have that backwards; "infographics" aren't really "information" + "graphics" but more like "infomercial" + "graphics", which is why they sacrifice accuracy -- or more generally effective communication of factual information, of which accuracy is a part -- in favor of emotional appeal. The choices that involve tradeoff of accuracy, etc., don't precede determination of the purpose.
  - arocks 13y ago
    I think we are both talking the same thing. I was referring to the article which criticized the Infographic for its stress on form over function.
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    I take issue with your auto-discounting information presented in infographics. Infographics is a tool for conveying a message AND optimize for viral spread of this message. That is the reason for infographics to appeal to emotions, not necessarily to sell something. Infographics are used by all kinds of nonprofits, see http://www.good.is/infographics http://www.good.is/infographics
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > I take issue with your auto-discounting information presented in infographics. Okay, but you don't present anything that contradicts it. > Infographics is a tool for conveying a message AND optimize for viral spread of this message. Sure, infographics are a tool for conveying a desired message and encouraging its viral spread (they are a transmission medium for meme's in Dawkins original sense of the word as a replicating unit of behavior.) None of that is contrary to what I said. In fact, its pretty much a rewording of what I said. > That is the reason for infographics to appeal to emotions, not necessarily to sell something. Yes, the memes infographics are used to spread aren't always purchase decision memes. I don't think that does anything to change the fact that they sacrifice effective communication of factual information to serve their promotional purposes. > Infographics are used by all kinds of nonprofits So are infomercials; I think the comparison remains apt.
mathattack 13y ago
I'm not a big fan of infographics because I keep thinking of Mark Twain saying, "There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." I'm always thinking, "What are they trying to pull over on me, and how should I be arguing against it?" The infographic usually hides more than it reveals. I like data visualization when I'm doing it for myself, or when a trusted colleague is using it to share information. Certainly there is much that can be seen more readily from a graphic than a number. But infographics are propaganda. p.s. For those so inclined, this book is 40 years old but still Gold. http://archive.org/details/HowToLieWithStatistics http://archive.org/details/HowToLieWithStatistics
vacri 13y ago
There is no One True Way to do a presentation. One message per slide is good for a slideshow, but taking this article to their logical extreme, they don't like prose, because you should only transfer one message per page. Infographics aren't meant to be slideshows - and slideshows suck when there isn't someone talking to them. Infographics aren't meant to have someone talking to them. Infographics are fine, and like anything, can be abused. Their example of 'look at this infographic for 10 seconds' was just stupid. It was too small to see any of the text, and infographics aren't intended to be viewed for only ten seconds. Not to mention that if I actually strain to read the writing they're obfuscating, the graphic actually makes plenty of sense and is very clear. They're stacking the deck for their favourite argument.
volaski 13y ago
I hate Infographics and I hate "Why you should" posts even more.
- chris_wot 13y ago
  You should write an article on why you shouldn't write articles about the reasonable reaction to hating infographics.
nekopa 13y ago
Do they mean 'Why we hate infographics in presentations?' I find a good infographic is great for syntopical study. As they say, a simple chart is good for a single point. But what if I want to look at the relationships between those single points? Do I flip between slides rapidly to find the connection? Do I open up multiple 'simple charts' and arrange them on my screen to study? (which I can't do right now as I'm on an iPad). I say use the right tool for the job...
chris_wot 13y ago
I'm not interested because they didn't make their point with an infographic.
recroad 13y ago
Why do I have to hate infographics again? Let me counter these four points in basic form: > #4. Most of them focus on form rather than substance That's true for anything - a web page design, an iPhone UI, a newspaper ad. "Most" of the stuff out there is always going to be average to below average, and infographics are no different. Normal distribution et al. > #3. One page to tell a story? Really? I'm not expecting to learn the "story" when I look at an infographic, and I accept that it's condensing information for me so that it's easily consumable (when the infographic is good, at least). If I want to see the most Metallica songs played on tour, I'll check out an infographic about it. If I want the history of a particular song, I'll look elsewhere. Infographics aren't supposed to provide the full story, that's what makes them consumable! > #2. Infographics ask too much to your brain See point #4. Pointing to a bad example and treating it like the norm is a very poor way of making a point. >#1. Infographics are not DYI Sure, but here's your opportunity for a startup.
- cyrillevincey 13y ago
  Not DIY => "Sure, but here's your opportunity for a startup." Agree, that's actually the opportunity that our friends at infogr.am and visual.ly are digging.
smellf 13y ago
Cache link for image for #2: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.loveinfographics.com%2Fcategories%2Feconomy-infographics%2Fus-consumption-waste-facts-infographic-infographic&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.loveinfographics.com%2Fcategories%2Feconomy-infographics%2Fus-consumption-waste-facts-infographic-infographic&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2939j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...
anoplus 13y ago
CONSISTENCY. In my first programming job my mentor said: "the most important thing in coding style is consistency". Charts are no different in that sense. Isn't there any ISO protocol for charting?
- abbazabba 13y ago
  There's as much an ISO protocol for charting as there is for designing websites across all browsers and platforms.
mavhc 13y ago
The main problem is the data is stuck in a bitmap, because it's 1985? The citations are graphics, you can't click them, you can't copy the data out and make your own charts, etc etc. Make some accessible html5 infographics, then we'll talk
morpher 13y ago
I'm surprised that the criticism of the "Kenya" infographic is limited to deriding its visual style as childish (and its lack of message). This graphic is much worse for the fact that there is no relationship between the numeric and graphic quantities (other than monotonicity). For example, 39.5 million people is about twice as many as 35.8? Why be snarky about it looking like something a kindergartner would do when there is substantive criticism to be given?
- cyrillevincey 13y ago
  That's actually my point: the general layout is so idiotic that you even don't look critically at the meaning of each representation. Indeed I did not notice the mistakes you mentioned.
ulisesrmzroche 13y ago
Can't really trust you guys to deliver anything if you really think data visualization was invented sometime in the early 2000's.
spader725 13y ago
The article writer contradicts him/herself when they emphasis "simplifying" infographics (with the animated gif example), but their favorite infographic at the moment is the Microsoft/Nokia example they showed. That infographic contains a pie chart. Pie charts are hard to read and to compare size. As you can see in that example, for you (the user) to gather the information, you need to see the percentile, then also look at the legend outside the pie chart. A bar graph would've conveyed the information more efficiently.
ctdonath 13y ago
I'm observing that many minimalistic/simplified forms of complex subjects are for the benefit of those who actually navigated the complexity, grokked it, and saw the underlying simplicity ... then documented it as simplicity in that context. It means little to anyone not already familiar with the complexity. Kudos if that understanding can be presented as a shortcut to enlightening the ignorant, but most of the time it's really done as a conclusion, not an introduction. Reading the ending of the story is not enlightening unless you've read from the beginning.
vitd 13y ago
Does anyone else find it ironic that an article about making your graphics simple and easy to understand is published on a website with a name that is unmemorable and unpronounceable? I will never be able to talk about where to find this with a friend because I don't know how to say the name of the website, and it would probably be misunderstood even if I did.

120 points by cyrillevincey 13y ago

The submitted article includes one section that begins, "Ever heard of the data-to-ink ratio? If so, skip this." But please don't skip that. That is an excellent visual illustration of how to remove "chartjunk" (Tufte's term) from a data graphic, vividly showing how much a chart can be improved by being simplified. Cute captioned photos are a dime a dozen, especially since websites for producing them for free popped up to feed some people's Facebook walls. Don't bother. Use a diagram when it really illustrates something, and write clearly the rest of the time. One of the strengths of the discussion on Hacker News is paragraphs of actual thoughtful text.

hsuresh 13y ago
Yup, i thought the animation was brilliant. Pretty much summed the blog post. The equivalent in HN is the wall of text - breaking down the message into paragraphs, and keeping the content crisp makes posts/comments a lot more readable. In fact, wouldn't data-to-ink ratio apply even for text?
jakobe 13y ago
I think that this animated GIF is actually very bad advice. 1) They remove axis labels, forcing the reader to infer the axis from context. 2) They remove the horizontal lines, making it harder to compare different values visually. 3) They remove tickmarks, so the reader no longer knows if the origin is at zero or not. 4) They add labels with 3 significant digits, which gives the reader a false sense of precision. Overall they arrive at a graphic that may be nicer to look at, but is functionally much worse than the original.
- notacoward 13y ago
  I had pretty much the same reaction. Yeah, definitely remove backgrounds and shadows and anything that's redundant. That's great, the original was awful, but they took the minimization too far. What they ended up with was missing information and IMO wasn't as nice to look at as some of the intermediate forms had been either. The one part that's really tricky is color. I actually liked the colored version a bit better, even though it provided no extra information content. Sure, if you want to use color for only one value (bacon) as a highlight that makes sense, but more generally I think a little bit of appropriate color can help maintain attention.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Much worse? or more in line with what most readers want: simplicity? The 3 significant digits is the raw full-precision data, if you want to do more with the graph than get a brief impression. This in contrast to having to infer an approximation by following lines to a coarse axis and visually interpolating the desired values. Providing this data obviates objections #2 & #3. Don't let the tickmarks, there or not, distract you from the zero. A favored lie in statistics is to conceal the lack (or off-the-chart) of zero, betting that the reader won't notice it having been dazzled by the dramatic angles on what (in many cases) is a rather flat data set. Default assumption should be the origin IS zero; if you're hiding the zero, ask yourself if you're really trying to lie to the reader. Marking the origin may provide plausible deniability, but most readers won't notice it - so act on truth, rather than concealing the lie in plain sight. Comparison should be as natural as the context & form of the graph makes appropriate. If it's not suitably obvious, reconsider the graph type. If the reader wants more accuracy, a graph may not be the best medium - and golly there's the raw data. The context should make the axis labels obvious and redundant. If it's not already obvious, reconsider whether the title or other commentary can be reworded to make it obvious. Of course, all this depends on what you're really trying to tell the reader, and what form follows that function. If tick marks or labels or origin value is necessary, include it ... but whatever isn't necessary, drop it.

josefresco 13y ago

I hate to be the one to bring this up, but the contrast between your body font color (and even heading font) and background is downright horrible. It could also be how the font is being rendered, it looks thin and broken up. For example the "t's" and "r's" and "l's" in the following sidebar text are almost invisible: "The data that makes your business tick is never more convincing than when it's put in context inside a story"

rpc_was_taken 13y ago
With Adblock it didn't even load the CSSs. And I might say, reading it in the default font over a white page improved the readability a lot. Maybe they should apply their own recomendations and reduce "CSS junk" on their site. ;)
Mercutionario 13y ago
Okay, we went back to plain helvetica for now, I agree myself I wasn't very happy with the way it rendered.
vacri 13y ago
It's ironic that an article fundamentalising on the ideal way to get your point across is so hard to read, on a page with so much visual noise.

darkxanthos 13y ago

One reason he gives is that there is too much data on the page. Tufte has said having a lot of data isnt the problem (humans are excellent at scanning images), terrible design is the problem. Since I suck at design though I tend to need to do simpler charts. :)

TheBiv 13y ago

...yet none of their points have what they say they love...it's all in images.

xerophtye 13y ago

I personally find vudlab's charts pretty cool. I first came across them in the Simpson's paradox article[1] and i really loved them because they let me EXPLORE the data. Yep, they're interactive! That gives a whole new prespective to the readers. [1] http://vudlab.com/simpsons/ http://vudlab.com/simpsons/

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
abbazabba 13y ago
d3's interactivity > excel and tableau in terms of quality data visualization. anytime someone looks at a chart, they should be able to ask "but what happen's when x, y and z change?" being able to manipulate the data without forcing the audience to run calculations themselves should be the norm. it takes work, but i hope we get there someday.
- cyrillevincey 13y ago
  That's exactly where we are heading. Data discovery made accessible to anyone via chart interactivity. Soon.

brey 13y ago

> in the early 90's, hipsters of that time decided that graphs weren't cool enough, and called them charts I'd always thought that was to not confuse with graph theory.

tgb 13y ago
The article appears to be a little confused on the historical use of words like chart and graph, so I wouldn't take anything they say seriously on that part. It's just a catchy introduction, presumably. http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chart%2C+plot%2C+graph%2C+infographic&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share= http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chart%2C+plot%2...
- ulisesrmzroche 13y ago
  Why should we take them seriously as a whole if they don't even know this basic history?
- cyrillevincey 13y ago
  I'm referring to the actual use of those words in the business everyday life to refer to a business 'chart', not to the use of those words in general. Of course the words "graph", "chart" or "data visualization" did not suddenly pop up at specific moment in the recent history. In your analytics, "graph" might relate to graph theory, linguistic, or music.

nemesisj 13y ago

It struck me that the post on why we hate infographics vs. the product the company puts out (visualisations of various data sources) was a bit of a non sequitur but the product does seems interesting and I'll probably give it a go. A bit more on the actual topic of infographics (vs just data visualisation) would be a company that also "hates" them, but is putting out a tool that helps people build "living infographics". They're like the normal infographics we see, but they aren't static and you can actually interact and manipulate the data which turns them into both a marketing tool (outbound) and a market research tool (inbound). Check them out here: http://stipso.com/ http://stipso.com/

jimt67 13y ago

Given the vast amount of junky infographics, I generally agree with their philosophy. They do, however, seem to ignore some of the research on the value of chartjunk. Like this paper, which won a best paper award at CHI '10: http://hci.usask.ca/publications/view.php?id=173 http://hci.usask.ca/publications/view.php?id=173

cscheid 13y ago
And then there's this, about that paper: http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2010/05/8-red-flags-about-the-useful-chartjunk-paper.html http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2010/05/8-red-flag... Edit: And this http://junkcharts.typepad.com/numbersruleyourworld/2010/05/more-questions-than-participants.html http://junkcharts.typepad.com/numbersruleyourworld/2010/05/m...
- jimt67 13y ago
  There are other studies (e.g., http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6327282&abstractAccess=no&userType=inst http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6327... ) A Google Scholar search will turn up others...the HCI literature seems to prefer the term visual embellishments to chartjunk.
danso 13y ago
I'm inclined to believe their findings, in the same way that I'd agree putting a picture of Miley Cyrus as the lead art for a story about unemployment rates would make you notice and remember that one story more than other unemployment rate stories. Quick question on the paper's methodology...is 20 a big enough sample size?
- jimt67 13y ago
  It may or it may not be...see: http://www.uvm.edu/~bbeckage/Teaching/DataAnalysis/AssignedPapers/Cohen_1990.pdf http://www.uvm.edu/~bbeckage/Teaching/DataAnalysis/AssignedP...

mcherm 13y ago

I want to take issue with one of their points. They link to an infographic on fuel sources and energy use from loveinfographics.com. Then they ask you to look at it for 10 seconds and ask they ask what you have learned. I might as well ask people (who don't speak Chinese) to run the author's article through Bablefish English > Chinese, remove all images, then read "Why We Hate Infographics" article carefully and tell what they learned. It would, of course, be a useless article, but that does not reflect badly on the article: it was never intended to be consumed that way! The infographic they link to is the kind of infographic that I find extremely valuable (and also quite difficult to create). A diagram which conveys a VERY significant amount of information in a very concise format. Looking at that graphic I can glean the following facts: * Gas and oil make up a little more than half of US fuel supplies. * Electricity is used roughly equally by residential, commercial, and industrial clients (well, slightly less for industrial). * I heat my home with fuel oil. Apparently I'm a minority in that, but not by an extreme amount: we fuel oil users make up maybe 5% of the usage (not the population). None of that information was a specific detail that the chart authors wanted to convey, so using less detailed methods would never have conveyed the information. A series of charts with numbers could have conveyed the information, but not in a form I could have processed with my brain (unless maybe I used it to build a chart like this). I want to defend complex data visualizations that convey large amounts of information in easily perceived ways. I still think the "infographics" that just just illustrate things with pretty pictures are stupid.

ghaff 13y ago
Ref: the simplify point. The famous (via Tufte) graphic of Napoleon's invasion of Russia (http://www.improving-visualisation.org/vis/id=205 http://www.improving-visualisation.org/vis/id=205) is widely cited as as a great example of conveying information useful and dramatically. If you accept this as an exemplar--you don't have to of course--it's anything but simple. Rather, it's a graphic that requires study but, given that study, offers up a great deal of information in return.
- lmg643 13y ago
  Edward Tufte has a lot of interesting things to say about charts and data, more than i ever thought possible. This infographic article seems to borrow some of his ideas without even mentioning him. I would suggest folks read tufte's "the cognitive style of powerpoint." Lots of similar concepts in a short pamphlet. http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0001yB&topic_id=1 http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0... http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint

theorique 13y ago

I would have found this article easier to understand if it presented its points as an infographic.

Mercutionario 13y ago
Smooth.

hawleyal 13y ago

OP is raging at bad infographics.

ianstallings 13y ago

I hate infographics. Although I understand the need for an overview of a subject, I don't think it's a substitute for a meaty body of text. I feel that anytime a subject is processed and homogenized into a one page graphic that I'm selling myself short. They remind me of "talking points" you see on the "news". I'd rather just read a body of text and then give myself some leeway to discover more about the topic in my own way. I have the patience and willpower to truly discover some truths, instead of parroting a factoid from an infographic. I do like how they are being used to draw people into a topic, and I do understand how data scientists are redefining visualization, I just don't like to see a ton of them for no reason other than being trendy.

petenixey 13y ago

In the battle between information and graphics I feel that sadly, graphics have won.

pseut 13y ago

Ending an article on data presentation with an animated gif of a bar chart is... curious.

benologist 13y ago

Article misses the point of modern infographics, since back in the original Digg days they've just been carefully manufactured spam designed to suck up idiots, backlinks and traffic on social news sites. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_game_digg_using_infographics_voting/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/d7e24/my_job_was_to_ga...

sailfast 13y ago

To the OP - nice points well condensed. Would love to see what your company does in more detail but it looks like your site's down - guessing traffic related from this post!

cyrillevincey 13y ago
Indeed, insane day. FYI the service is back up.

Intermernet 13y ago

I hate to be the guy who first mentions XKCD on an HN thread (I call it "Munroe's Law"), but there are some beautiful infographics from Randall... See http://halfblog.net/2013/01/22/infographics-of-xkcd/ http://halfblog.net/2013/01/22/infographics-of-xkcd/

taeric 13y ago

There is really only one reason I hate infographics. I can't do them. If I had a fraction of the skill displayed at xkcd or the like, I would love them. :)

jkscm 13y ago

At least bad visualizations can be funny: http://wtfviz.net http://wtfviz.net

chrisreichel 13y ago

Why we hate Why we hate (And why you should)

redact207 13y ago

Getting pretty tired of all these posts that are telling me what I should hate. It's just infographics. They're not a substitute for hard core analytics and they're not supposed to be. It's a designers spin on providing summary level data that sits somewhere between the words of design and analysis. If you want a quickly digestible, publishable bit of content, use infographics. If you want to provide more meat to your message, don't use them.

arocks 13y ago

Infographics sacrifice accuracy i.e. proportions, colors etc in favor of emotional appeal. Sometimes facts need to be packaged better for a greater impact. That's why they are primarily used for promotional rather than for reporting purposes.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> Infographics sacrifice accuracy i.e. proportions, colors etc in favor of emotional appeal. Sometimes facts need to be packaged better for a greater impact. That's why they are primarily used for promotional rather than for reporting purposes. I think you have that backwards; "infographics" aren't really "information" + "graphics" but more like "infomercial" + "graphics", which is why they sacrifice accuracy -- or more generally effective communication of factual information, of which accuracy is a part -- in favor of emotional appeal. The choices that involve tradeoff of accuracy, etc., don't precede determination of the purpose.
- arocks 13y ago
  I think we are both talking the same thing. I was referring to the article which criticized the Infographic for its stress on form over function.
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  I take issue with your auto-discounting information presented in infographics. Infographics is a tool for conveying a message AND optimize for viral spread of this message. That is the reason for infographics to appeal to emotions, not necessarily to sell something. Infographics are used by all kinds of nonprofits, see http://www.good.is/infographics http://www.good.is/infographics
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > I take issue with your auto-discounting information presented in infographics. Okay, but you don't present anything that contradicts it. > Infographics is a tool for conveying a message AND optimize for viral spread of this message. Sure, infographics are a tool for conveying a desired message and encouraging its viral spread (they are a transmission medium for meme's in Dawkins original sense of the word as a replicating unit of behavior.) None of that is contrary to what I said. In fact, its pretty much a rewording of what I said. > That is the reason for infographics to appeal to emotions, not necessarily to sell something. Yes, the memes infographics are used to spread aren't always purchase decision memes. I don't think that does anything to change the fact that they sacrifice effective communication of factual information to serve their promotional purposes. > Infographics are used by all kinds of nonprofits So are infomercials; I think the comparison remains apt.

mathattack 13y ago

I'm not a big fan of infographics because I keep thinking of Mark Twain saying, "There are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." I'm always thinking, "What are they trying to pull over on me, and how should I be arguing against it?" The infographic usually hides more than it reveals. I like data visualization when I'm doing it for myself, or when a trusted colleague is using it to share information. Certainly there is much that can be seen more readily from a graphic than a number. But infographics are propaganda. p.s. For those so inclined, this book is 40 years old but still Gold. http://archive.org/details/HowToLieWithStatistics http://archive.org/details/HowToLieWithStatistics

vacri 13y ago

There is no One True Way to do a presentation. One message per slide is good for a slideshow, but taking this article to their logical extreme, they don't like prose, because you should only transfer one message per page. Infographics aren't meant to be slideshows - and slideshows suck when there isn't someone talking to them. Infographics aren't meant to have someone talking to them. Infographics are fine, and like anything, can be abused. Their example of 'look at this infographic for 10 seconds' was just stupid. It was too small to see any of the text, and infographics aren't intended to be viewed for only ten seconds. Not to mention that if I actually strain to read the writing they're obfuscating, the graphic actually makes plenty of sense and is very clear. They're stacking the deck for their favourite argument.

volaski 13y ago

I hate Infographics and I hate "Why you should" posts even more.

chris_wot 13y ago
You should write an article on why you shouldn't write articles about the reasonable reaction to hating infographics.

nekopa 13y ago

Do they mean 'Why we hate infographics in presentations?' I find a good infographic is great for syntopical study. As they say, a simple chart is good for a single point. But what if I want to look at the relationships between those single points? Do I flip between slides rapidly to find the connection? Do I open up multiple 'simple charts' and arrange them on my screen to study? (which I can't do right now as I'm on an iPad). I say use the right tool for the job...

chris_wot 13y ago

I'm not interested because they didn't make their point with an infographic.

recroad 13y ago

Why do I have to hate infographics again? Let me counter these four points in basic form: > #4. Most of them focus on form rather than substance That's true for anything - a web page design, an iPhone UI, a newspaper ad. "Most" of the stuff out there is always going to be average to below average, and infographics are no different. Normal distribution et al. > #3. One page to tell a story? Really? I'm not expecting to learn the "story" when I look at an infographic, and I accept that it's condensing information for me so that it's easily consumable (when the infographic is good, at least). If I want to see the most Metallica songs played on tour, I'll check out an infographic about it. If I want the history of a particular song, I'll look elsewhere. Infographics aren't supposed to provide the full story, that's what makes them consumable! > #2. Infographics ask too much to your brain See point #4. Pointing to a bad example and treating it like the norm is a very poor way of making a point. >#1. Infographics are not DYI Sure, but here's your opportunity for a startup.

cyrillevincey 13y ago
Not DIY => "Sure, but here's your opportunity for a startup." Agree, that's actually the opportunity that our friends at infogr.am and visual.ly are digging.

smellf 13y ago

Cache link for image for #2: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.loveinfographics.com%2Fcategories%2Feconomy-infographics%2Fus-consumption-waste-facts-infographic-infographic&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.loveinfographics.com%2Fcategories%2Feconomy-infographics%2Fus-consumption-waste-facts-infographic-infographic&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.2939j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...

anoplus 13y ago

CONSISTENCY. In my first programming job my mentor said: "the most important thing in coding style is consistency". Charts are no different in that sense. Isn't there any ISO protocol for charting?

abbazabba 13y ago
There's as much an ISO protocol for charting as there is for designing websites across all browsers and platforms.

mavhc 13y ago

The main problem is the data is stuck in a bitmap, because it's 1985? The citations are graphics, you can't click them, you can't copy the data out and make your own charts, etc etc. Make some accessible html5 infographics, then we'll talk

morpher 13y ago

I'm surprised that the criticism of the "Kenya" infographic is limited to deriding its visual style as childish (and its lack of message). This graphic is much worse for the fact that there is no relationship between the numeric and graphic quantities (other than monotonicity). For example, 39.5 million people is about twice as many as 35.8? Why be snarky about it looking like something a kindergartner would do when there is substantive criticism to be given?

cyrillevincey 13y ago
That's actually my point: the general layout is so idiotic that you even don't look critically at the meaning of each representation. Indeed I did not notice the mistakes you mentioned.

ulisesrmzroche 13y ago

Can't really trust you guys to deliver anything if you really think data visualization was invented sometime in the early 2000's.

spader725 13y ago

The article writer contradicts him/herself when they emphasis "simplifying" infographics (with the animated gif example), but their favorite infographic at the moment is the Microsoft/Nokia example they showed. That infographic contains a pie chart. Pie charts are hard to read and to compare size. As you can see in that example, for you (the user) to gather the information, you need to see the percentile, then also look at the legend outside the pie chart. A bar graph would've conveyed the information more efficiently.

ctdonath 13y ago

I'm observing that many minimalistic/simplified forms of complex subjects are for the benefit of those who actually navigated the complexity, grokked it, and saw the underlying simplicity ... then documented it as simplicity in that context. It means little to anyone not already familiar with the complexity. Kudos if that understanding can be presented as a shortcut to enlightening the ignorant, but most of the time it's really done as a conclusion, not an introduction. Reading the ending of the story is not enlightening unless you've read from the beginning.

vitd 13y ago

Does anyone else find it ironic that an article about making your graphics simple and easy to understand is published on a website with a name that is unmemorable and unpronounceable? I will never be able to talk about where to find this with a friend because I don't know how to say the name of the website, and it would probably be misunderstood even if I did.