This was an ad that appeared in The Economist by Wharton University.
While the visualization is eye catching, what it is trying to convey is confusing. The first glance explains nothing, but based on the caption, I was able to figure out that this is a frequency wave that the university is using to reflect the experience level (in the number of years) of various professors in their Finance department. We can see that some professors are highly experienced while others are not.
Now comes the confusing part. I was not able to understand what the different colors symbolize – were they only used to make the image more striking or do they have some other meaning. Also, this graphic does not emphasize on the professor’s teaching experience and specializations in the finance field, rather it shows that around 1/3 of the professors do not have a lot of experience. There is no way to understand how the different professors can impact prospective students, based only on their level of experience. Also, I see no connect between the graphic and the perception that Wharton is trying to create about their finance department (or the text written in the ad).
This visualization is an empty graphic designed to look pretty with no real takeaway.
Source – http://creativegood.com/blog/the-wrong-info-visualization-whartons-ad/
It looks like each vertical line represents a professor and their experience in years. Though it would have been better if they used a number that tells the total amount of years of experience the entire department has instead of what they did.
I feel they have left lot of math for the reader. If the reader wants to inquire about ‘average experience of the professors’ he has to manually count the blocks and do the math.