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Specialty

Data visualization

Represents data with shapes, positions, and colors so they can be compared, explored, and understood.

In Spanish
Visualización de datos
Origin
Modern foundations: Tufte (1983); Cleveland and McGill (1984)

What problem it addresses

Not all charts are read equally well: comparing angles or areas is much harder than comparing positions.

Principles

  • Position

    What compares best: values on a common axis.

  • Length and angle

    Read less accurately than position.

  • Area and color

    The least accurate for comparing quantities.

Applications in design

  • Use it like this

    To compare quantities, use bars aligned on a common axis.

  • Avoid

    Pie charts with many similar slices.

  • Don’t fall for it

    Start bars at zero: otherwise you exaggerate the differences.

Connections

Builds on

Related to

Authors and works

  1. 1983

    Edward R. Tufte

    Argued for devoting a chart’s ink to the data and removing what does not inform.

  2. 1984

    William S. Cleveland and Robert McGill

    Ranked, through experiments, which ways of representing values are read most accurately.

Sources

Original sources

  • Tufte, E. R. (1983). The visual display of quantitative information. Graphics Press.
  • Cleveland, W. S., & McGill, R. (1984). Graphical perception: Theory, experimentation, and application to the development of graphical methods. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79(387), 531–554. View source: Cleveland, W. S., & McGill, R. (1984)

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