Excellent article Enrico - shared it with my class. I think the classical teaching method of precision of reading is a good guide, but we also need to take into account, as you say, effectiveness. The appropriate choice of encoding depends on not just the type of the data but also the semantics (great point about the part/whole argument in favour of pie charts). I also wonder what role convention has to play? If people expect some types of data to be presented using a given type of visualization, should we take that into account, even if it's not empirically ideal in a lab-based perception study? Maybe? Or maybe we should be pushing for adoption of new evidence-based designs.
Interesting - with the New York student question would a cartogram not be better?
This would look nicer, add information about New York geography and go well with a colour or lightness / value.
Glancing at the ratio that was calculated looks fairly even - if large discrepancy likely age of cars / speed limit of roads would account for the difference,
Excellent article Enrico - shared it with my class. I think the classical teaching method of precision of reading is a good guide, but we also need to take into account, as you say, effectiveness. The appropriate choice of encoding depends on not just the type of the data but also the semantics (great point about the part/whole argument in favour of pie charts). I also wonder what role convention has to play? If people expect some types of data to be presented using a given type of visualization, should we take that into account, even if it's not empirically ideal in a lab-based perception study? Maybe? Or maybe we should be pushing for adoption of new evidence-based designs.
Interesting - with the New York student question would a cartogram not be better?
This would look nicer, add information about New York geography and go well with a colour or lightness / value.
Glancing at the ratio that was calculated looks fairly even - if large discrepancy likely age of cars / speed limit of roads would account for the difference,
Chris
www.chrisweatherburn.com