Link roundup for August 2022

There’s a lot of device on making graphs, but sometimes research on whether the advice works is harder to come by.

This research paper on graph design tries to assess whether “decluttering” (Edward Tufte’s “data to ink ratio”) and “focus,” which is annotation of graphs. I have to say “try” because the sample size for the experiment is just 24 people, which seems small for a topic like this.

“Focusing” on a graph was very effective in helping people remember. 

Removing clutter had a smaller effect, but people generally liked those graphs a little better.

Ajani K, Lee E, Xiong C, Nussbaumer Knaflic C, Kemper W, & Franconeri S. Declutter and focus: Empirically evaluating design guidelines for effective data communication. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics: in press. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2021.3068337

This is a plain English summary of the paper. 

• • • • •

People like to attack graphs with a lot of noise in this. Stuart Ritchie reminds us, “Noise is why we use statistics.´

 And that’s it for this month!