Statistical Graphics and more

This post on Junk Charts caught my attention. It is the mosaic plot version of the greenhouse gas chart which was initially a pie chart. This is maybe one of the best counter examples for mosaic plots. It is not hard to explain why a “traditional” mosaic plot completely fails to visualize this kind of […]

Some months ago I stumbled over the website of the ifo-institute, which is one of Germany’s most renowned instances when it comes to judgement about the economical situation of the country. They feature the so called “ifo Index”, which gives an indication of how well the economy is doing based on a survey of a […]

I recently stumbled over the “Synoptic” project. It is a nice animated visualization of weather data – not particularly unique, but aesthetically well done. I don’t have to argue about the lack of any generality regarding data analysis tasks here … What caught my attention is the overall “staging” of the presentation. When you compare […]

Here is the data for the so called “Umweltprämie” 21995    9.2.2009 34210    10.2.2009 39856    11.2.2009 41619    12.2.2009 44161    13.2.2009 60730    16.2.2009 62806    17.2.2009 76926    18.2.2009 85304    19.2.2009 94691    20.2.2009 104840    23.2.2009 120016    25.2.2009 139964    27.2.2009 150722    2.3.2009 157696    3.3.2009 166238    4.3.2009 180492    5.3.2009 188421    6.3.2009 201469    9.3.2009 217693    10.3.2009 225870    11.3.2009 231533    12.3.2009 241280    13.3.2009 246853    16.3.2009 Using the trivial linear least square fit will now yield the 7th of May.  There is still no real hint to anything […]

Here is what Andrew Gelman posted on his blog: I have never ever seen an example where I’ve felt a boxplot was appropriate. I’m open to being convinced, but I don’t think you’ll be able to convince me. Bring on the examples! You can imagine that I can’t really agree with him, and I guess […]

Like all nations who fight the global financial and economic crises, Germany has put a package over several hundred billion euros. One part of the package is the so called “Umweltprämie”, which is nothing else than a voucher over 2,500 euros for everybody who turns in his/her 9 or more years old car to be […]

At www.politifact.com they put up the Obameter – the ultimate chart, which shows the progress of president Obama’s work. So far just a simple barchart, but it has the potential for a timeseries chart, which shows Obama’s success – or failure – over time.

Well, certainly not – or better not completely. It was the post at strangemaps which inspired me to check for something which I somehow always suspected, but never went after. With the end of the 30 years war in 1648 and the reinstitution of the Augsburg religious peace of 1555 the german map was set […]

Don’t miss this great 25min documentary on the London tube map. You find it at information aesthetics. There is one central sentence by Milton Glaser I like most: “…. All design basically is a strange combination of the intelligence and the intuition, where the intelligence only takes you so far and than your intuition has […]

Attending a recent workshop on data visualization, the discussion after a presentation on a graphical display technique to visualize a particular type of data (sorry for not being more precise here, but the presenter would not like to be identified too easily) led to the quote of the speaker: “I don’t care about the data, […]

Again, in 2008 the most interesting thing for a statistician following the Tour de France is to look for means to detect possible doping cases. Right now we have the total results for the first 11 stages for all teams, and a simple boxplot of total time after stage 11 against team – ranked by […]

Just bought Donald A. Norman’s Book “Emotional Design” (I know, out for some time now, but …).  Although I didn’t get much further than the Prologue, it widens the set of design paradigms to a more realistic scope. One can argue about how valid it is to build on specific emotional reactions when designing products, […]