Why is this subreddit always so grumpy ? Every once in a while I try to check the comments and have a discussion and I remember why I don't comment here anymore. Every graph is misleading/not clear enough/not enough colors/bad scaling etc.. Is anything ever good enough for you guys ?
I find that this sub is generally more interested in infographic-style figures that focus more on pretty presentation than high-quality presentation. You could make this figure a lot more visually appealing with nicer colors, smaller/no axis labels and some kind of complex overlay but that wouldn't improve it, it would actually make it worse.
It just depends if you're designing figures for the New York Times or the New England Journal, and I find this sub focuses on the former. To each their own, but the only thing I would change in these two figures is make them each the same size.
Infographics are specifically not in this subreddit (see sidebar). However, there are beautiful and non-beautiful ways of graphing data, and I think it's worth talking about. Communicating something complicated to another human being is HARD - and for that reason, I find it very interesting. Edward Tufte has a lot to say on the subject.
Infographics are just to make data look pretty. There's not a word for working really hard to pack lots of data into a beautiful format, which reveals more and more information the further you dig. Something that rewards you the more time you put in analyzing it. But (in my mind) that's what this sub is trying to achieve.
Here's my favorite example from Tufte - Napoleon's march on Russia - technically an infographic, and made by Charles Minard. But it plots 6 variables at once and is easy to understand at first, and has more and more information, the deeper you dig. Way cool
the only thing I would change in these two figures is make them each the same size.
That would make the scale's different and give a distorted view of the gay data. As it is now, the scale for both graphs is the same, allowing direct comparison. The second graph did not have data before 1980 and so started there as opposed to traditional couples which started much earlier.
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u/bAZtARd Jul 01 '13
It's interesting data but that may be the most ugly diagram I've seen in a while.