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A beautiful illustration of the extent to which choice and distribution of colour influences the interpretation of a graphic. The ominous rushing-in of the doo
by blahedo 17y ago
A beautiful illustration of the extent to which choice and distribution of colour influences the interpretation of a graphic. The ominous rushing-in of the doom-and-gloom purples and greys was just about terrifying (ok, I exaggerate a little). Would this animation have had the same effect if scaled from e.g. blue to yellow?
- nostrademons 17y agoActually, yes. It'd just look like the country is on fire then. There've been similar charts (mostly for foreclosure rates or house prices, and for obesity) that use red->purple, green->red, and all other sorts of color combinations, and they all look similarly ominous. The units are the real issue here. If they'd set the top bracket at 20%, this chart would be ho-hum. You'd have some splashes of color in Detroit, the Rust Belt, and Central California, and most of the country would be a moderate yellow or orange.
- wheels 17y agoI think more to the point was that they used basically the full color spectrum to cover a few percentage points. It wouldn't have been nearly as dramatic if the color spectrum were mapped to the 0-100% range. The country really changes colors radically from national unemployment at 5% vs. 8%.
- messel 17y agoI was thinking the same thing as I watched. Then I realized that the limits were pretty reasonable given unemployment dynamics. Deeply interesting nonetheless. Is there some expectation of recovery hidden within the spatial graph?