r4

Response Questions 3-20



• Clearly there are many ways to make data visualization misleading, but often this is a result of making a graph more visually enticing. Part of a designer's job is to appeal to viewers, and without certain visual trickery this can be a tall task. How can a designer work between these two ideas, particularly with data sets that do not lend themselves to visually intriguing representation?

•How literally should we interpret the principle of proportional ink? The author does not leave much wiggle room, but in some of the examples it seems a bit silly to completely submit to this principle. In the 3D bar graph, for example, the extra ink on the sides of the bar do not really have an effect on the perception of the bars' height. Is it really that important to maintain an exact ratio of ink to the data's values?

• Is it a generally good idea to avoid bubble charts? Particularly those that compare 3/4 variables at once? It seems like these tend to cause more trouble than they are worth, especially when they are static.