Tuesday, May 18, 2010

damn lies and good graphs

maybe they're right that crappy chartjunk graphs are better than crappy non-chartjunk graphs. But I don't think it's appropriate to generalize to the claim that chartjunk graphs are better than good graphs.

Is chartjunk undeservedly maligned? Possibly, said a recent post on Infosthetics. Andrew Gelman offers the critique I wish I'd written (instead of, shame, shame, frivolously linking without comment). The rest here.

4 comments:

Dan Eastwood said...

But you DID comment, if only briefly. :-)

Dan Eastwood said...

... and you are not linking to what you intended. I think you meant this: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2010/05/what_visualizat.html

Helen DeWitt said...

You mean by coming up with a headline? (The text was from Infosthetics.)

Thanks for drawing my attention to the mislink. (Fixed.) I need a secretary to check my blog for me.

egypt-panorama.com said...

Loved your article
rest of the article is an interesting read, thank you.