News and Notes from PolicyViz - Issue #9

The Spiral

Happy New Year! I hope you and your families are well, healthy, and happy heading into 2022.

I won't belabor it because you've surely seen enough discussion of The Spiral this past week on dataviz-social media. If not, this spiral graph from the op-ed section of the New York Times was published last Thursday and was roundly and loudly ridiculed on social media.

New York Times "spiral" chart

Critics said there was "no reason to make the graph a spiral" and that it was the "most unhelpful graph I have ever seen." There was a lot of debate about it--was it unnecessarily complex? Why not just show it as a line or area chart? Why is the NYT trying to be cute? On and on and on....

Personally, I like it. It's different. It's engaging. And it's not a line or area chart, which we've seen countless times over the course of the pandemic. Remember, the audience is the most important thing when it comes to data visualization--who is reading the op-ed section of the Times and what are they trying to get out of this article?

The fact that people were discussing this static graph for days seems to justify the decision to include it in the newspaper at all! Even if you didn't like it or immediately understand it, you probably went out of your way to take a look!

I did a quick little discussion about it on my YouTube channel, which you can watch below or over on YouTube directly. But that's enough on it for now.

Until next time,

Jon

Podcast Episode #209: The Flerlage Twins

On this week's episode of the podcast, I'm joined by Tableau experts Kevin and Ken Flerlage--the Flerlage Twins! We talk about their work, their efforts to provide as much (free!) Tableau training as possible, and their love for making data visualizations.

What I'm Reading

Books

• Shadow and Bone (only recommended if you're really into YA)

• Protecting Your Privacy in a Data-Driven World by Claire Bowen

• A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication by Michael Friendly and Harold Wainer

Articles

• Scientists from historically excluded groups face a hostile obstacle course, Nature

• Showing Data about People: A Design Space of Anthropographics, Morais et al.

• Who Teaches Accessibility? A Survey of U.S. Computing Faculty, Shinohara et al.

Note: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Need a goal for 2022? Learn more graphs!

Whether you know this by now or not, there is a wide array of graphs available to us when we communicate our data. We all know how to read line charts, bar charts, and pie charts–not because we are born with those skills but because we are taught how to read them as children and are exposed to them hundreds and hundreds of times. I have three resources to help you learn about more graphs:

Video Series: One Chart at a Time. More than 50 videos from experts in the field of data visualization, who walk you through different graphs one at a time.

Book: Better Data Visualizations. My 2021 book that explores best practices for data visualization and has more than 500 graph examples to help you on your way.

Collection: Data Visualization Catalog. My collection of more than 1200 graphs to explore. You can also download the entire catalog (for free!) if you want to have the library on your own machine.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel

My YouTube channel continues to grow, and I've got a lot more stuff in the works! I'm considering expanding the channel to include more PowerPoint tutorials and some smaller, more introductory Excel work as well. I've also got a bunch of dataviz critiques I'm planning to get to in the next week. So make sure you subscribe and check it out!