Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Tufte on Best Election Data Displays

We were all complaining last night about the quality of the graphics on the various news channels. Too much stuff, difficult to read. The worst were the graphs on CNN showing the voter breakdowns. They had centered horizontal lines showing things like "Under 40" colored blue or red depending on how they went and with their length showing the amount. They sorted top-to-bottom by length, forming an hour glass. It was impossible to read since the text was white and the background was whitish. If the percentage was small enough the white text bleed onto the whitish background.

Edward Tufte started this thread on his forum, Best election data displays. Hopefully more examples are added soon.

No comments: