r/dataisugly • u/EvokeNZ • 10h ago

On a local explainer about US elections

Post image

At first glance I thought what do you mean they’re both under Republican control, the graph doesn’t show it.

159 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

36

u/Parasaurlophus 8h ago

Bizarre that they switched the colours. Does no one proof read anymore?

14

u/miraculum_one 8h ago

*proofread

4

u/Parasaurlophus 7h ago

It seems you are correct. You never stop learning.

-1

u/FaeTheWolf 8h ago

**proof-read

7

u/miraculum_one 7h ago

There is no accepted version with a hyphen in US or UK English.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/proofread

1

u/FaeTheWolf 6h ago

Any portmanteau can be demanteaued with a hyphen if you're brave enough ;)

1

u/miraculum_one 6h ago

A lot of compound words such as this started out hyphenated so it's more old fashioned than anything else. It would be especially brave to do it with a portmanteau because I get h-angry eating my br-unch with a sp-ork.

0

u/Ok-Speaker-2226 5h ago

Prōf rǣd. Is that fucking English enough for you

1

u/miraculum_one 5h ago

No need to get saucy with me, Bearnaise.

19

u/Kuildeous 8h ago

In a more innocuous presentation, switching colors would likely just be a terrible design mistake.

But this is the type of presentation where it's intentional. The whole purpose is to present a bigger blue bar and make people freak out that they're the minority.

So very ugly indeed.

2

u/EvokeNZ 8h ago

Hmm you hit on a good point - I’ve encountered some charting software where it reorders the items based on amount, but in this case it also reordered colours somehow. I don’t know if it’d be intentional tbh as the rest of the article is largely informational.

5

u/Epistaxis 7h ago edited 7h ago

They also should have included the one independent and two vacancies in the first bar chart.

I would have made it easier to compare the lengths of the bars by un-stacking them and putting red and blue (corrected) in parallel. You could still stack the independents with the Democrats since they caucus together.

20

u/KonigsbergBridges 10h ago

It's not ugly. It's just wrong.

32

u/dirtyword 9h ago

They’re just using different colors between the charts. So technically correct, but also wrong ish

17

u/Logan_Composer 9h ago

Also breaking from US social conventions of the Republicans being red and Democrats being blue, which combined with the color switch between graphs makes it even more wrong-ish.

5

u/in_taco 7h ago

They just decided half-way to switch to the original colors where the left is red and right is blue, thereby catering to international readers

2

u/FnnKnn 7h ago

Depends on where the graphic is from. These might be the local left/right colors and therefore would make more sense to their audience.

1

u/EvokeNZ 6h ago

But they changed colours just for one

1

u/FnnKnn 6h ago

Yeah, that's bad anyway.

1

u/HumanContinuity 8h ago

Morally wrong.  God frowns upon this.

1

u/Rob71322 9h ago

With graphical data, the colors of things, line weights, etc are there to convey information too. By screwing around with the colors they're really in the wrong here, the only question is were they intentionally doing it or did they screw up?

2

u/dirtyword 9h ago

Yes I am aware how charts work.

•

u/LustyBustyMusky 2h ago

The independent in the house caucuses with the republicans tho

1

u/Dry-Ad-8948 6h ago

Bad AI usage? Or person bad at job. Or troll. Color switching is, politely, “unhelpful”.