{"id":108,"date":"2013-02-15T05:14:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T13:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/?p=108"},"modified":"2013-02-15T05:18:02","modified_gmt":"2013-02-15T13:18:02","slug":"getin-wet-with-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/2013\/02\/15\/getin-wet-with-data\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pitfalls of Data Display"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his essay, <a href=\"http:\/\/http:\/\/ieeexplore.ieee.org\/xpls\/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4459287&amp;tag=1\"><em>The Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays: <\/em><em>The Conundrum of Clarity<\/em><\/a>, Charles Kostelnick examines the visual rhetoric of data displays and how its dramatic change in the last fifty years has affected rhetorical approaches.\u00a0 Kostelnick theorizes that there has been a democratization effect of data design technology.\u00a0 Similar to what Richard A. Lanham explains in the <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.uchicago.edu\/Misc\/Chicago\/468828.html\">Economics of<\/a><\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.press.uchicago.edu\/Misc\/Chicago\/468828.html\"> Attention<\/a>, our perception of the world has been become increasingly shaped by the synergistic relationship between data and design.\u00a0 Our understanding of the data we are presented with hinges on the clarity of its presentation.\u00a0 The design of the pie chart, spread sheet, or graph is equally important as the data it presents.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>We are immediately drawn to Tufte\u2019s maxim that \u201c[g]raphical excellence consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency,\u201d that it \u201cgives to the viewer the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space\u201d and that it \u201crequires telling the truth about the data\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Tufte&#8217;s maxim roughly outlines Quintilian&#8217;s guide to good rhetoric.\u00a0 Ideally, good visual rhetoric serves a utilitarian purpose to condense complex ideas and communicate them efficiently.\u00a0 Displaying data is an effective way to present facts that transforms a passive activity such as reading into an interactive experience.\u00a0 The great number of visual data displays at our disposal has enabled us to &#8220;move and delight&#8221; our audience like never before.\u00a0 The genre of graphing software has expanded to include a number of different charts and graphs such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bar<\/li>\n<li>Horizontal Bar<\/li>\n<li>Pie<\/li>\n<li>Line<\/li>\n<li>Area\/Mountain<\/li>\n<li>Surface<\/li>\n<li>Scatter<\/li>\n<li>Radar<\/li>\n<li>Donut<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>With so many options to choose from, it is often difficult to determine which display best presents and communicates the data.\u00a0 Since our brains are all hard-wired differently, there is no universal answer to this.\u00a0 However, scientists have researched which method produces optimal clarity to which designers can\u00a0 use to gauge which type may best suit their purpose.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">Kostelnick observes that out of all this comes ethical considerations.\u00a0 &#8220;Designers, unconstrained by graphical standards or professional oversight, can manipulate charts and graphs for their own ends&#8221; (Kostelnick, 3).\u00a0 Tufte&#8217;s &#8220;Lie Factor&#8221; measures the discrepancy between the size of the data and its visual representation.\u00a0 In other words, the apparent size of the data is not the same as the actual size of the data.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\">In another class, our teacher showed us how graphs can often times distort the data.\u00a0 The example of 3-D graphs display data as volume.\u00a0 Area only goes up by square in a linear dimension (\u03c0r^2).\u00a0 But volume goes up by cube (length x width x height). \u00a0The distortion here is exacerbated by foreshortening and improper scaling.\u00a0 MSN and Yahoo appear to tower over Google, when in reality they are only up by 5%.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_110\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/files\/2013\/02\/graph1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-110\" class=\"wp-image-110 \" alt=\"graph1\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/files\/2013\/02\/graph1.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-110\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">3-D Graph. Envs21 ppt.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Data can also be misconstrued when it is presented as counts instead of rates.\u00a0 The first graph (pink) may appear to indicate that younger drivers are involved in far more fatal car crashes than elderly drivers.\u00a0 Of course, the graph doesn&#8217;t reveal the total number of drivers in each age range.\u00a0 There are far more younger drivers on the road than elderly drivers.\u00a0 If the data is presented as a rate (blue), then we can see that the rate of fatal car crashes is actually higher amongst elderly drivers.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_112\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/files\/2013\/02\/graph3.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-112\" class=\"wp-image-112 \" alt=\"graph3\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/files\/2013\/02\/graph3.png\" width=\"360\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-112\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Data presented as Count, Envs21 ppt<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_113\" style=\"width: 370px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/files\/2013\/02\/graph4.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-113\" class=\"wp-image-113 \" alt=\"graph4\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/files\/2013\/02\/graph4.png\" width=\"360\" height=\"360\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-113\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Data as rate, Envs21 ppt<\/p><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his essay, The Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays: The Conundrum of Clarity, Charles Kostelnick examines the visual rhetoric of data displays and how its dramatic change in the last fifty years has affected rhetorical approaches.\u00a0 Kostelnick theorizes that there &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/2013\/02\/15\/getin-wet-with-data\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":3,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"anouaux","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/author\/anouaux\/"},"qubely_comment":3,"qubely_category":"<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/category\/uncategorized\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Engl 16 - Blog Posts<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"In his essay, The Visual Rhetoric of Data Displays: The Conundrum of Clarity, Charles Kostelnick examines the visual rhetoric of data displays and how its dramatic change in the last fifty years has affected rhetorical approaches.\u00a0 Kostelnick theorizes that there &hellip; Continue reading &rarr;","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/anouaux\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}