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A friend sent me this line chart, presumably published in the print edition of the Irish Times. They had the same chart published on their website with corrected data, and have since corrected the y-axis direction. So props to them for making it a bit more intuitive.

Most leaders in the data visualization space maintain that visualizations should have a clear, focused message. Stephanie Evergreen (of Evergreen Data) says that we “visualize to communicate a point.” If we don’t have a point, why visualize? Mike Bostock (of Observable, and d3.js fame) says good dataviz “should be opinionated.

I came across these enrolment projections from BC’s School District 43 (aka SD43) while working on another project. School districts are usually pretty bad at data viz, but really, who can blame them? It’s not like kids won’t go to school just because the district doesn’t have a clear communication strategy, and budgets tend to be on the tighter side.

I found this stacked bar chart by Vancouver consulting firm OXD while working on another project. Since they do design consulting, OXD’s visualizations are usually pretty good, but I found this one took too long to read. The visualization comes from the Anti-racism Online Engagement Report OXD developed for the Government of British Columbia.

Join us as we explore the ways data have been visualized throughout history, from ancient times to the modern era. Today we look at Sumerian clay tokens and tablets, which were used at least 6000 years ago and eventually developed into the first writing system.

I recently attended a talk by Steve Franconeri of the Visual Thinking Lab whose big takeaway was that “reading a graph is like reading a paragraph.” Even though graphs are visual, we rely on slow cognitive operations to process them. Recognition is quick, but comparison takes a lot more time.

I stumbled upon this donut chart by Global Forest Watch, which is a project of the World Resources Institute. If you’re not familiar with Global Forest Watch, they do a lot of dataviz related to forest cover, deforestation, forest fires, and climate change, much of which can be found in their dashboard.

Join us as we explore the ways data have been visualized throughout history, from ancient times to the modern era. Today, we look at Indigenous beadwork, which was (and still is) used as a way to embed information and meaning into everyday objects. Beadwork is present in many cultures around the world, but the various Indigenous Peoples of North America have been creating beadwork for over 8,000 years (having its start around 6,500 BCE, as far as we know).

The more stuff we have in a chart, the longer it takes to read. Whether you’re working with Excel, Tableau, Observable, or ggplot2, by default charting software tends to add all sorts of extra elements like borders, gridlines, legends, and extra labels. In other words, chart clutter.

I was doing some digging on measures of mental wellbeing for a survey development project (it’s always good to stay up-to-date on current measures) when I came across a report on the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of Canadian post-secondary students. This was jointly published by the Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) and the Canadian Association of Colleges and University Student Services (CACUSS).