Comments on: Minard, Tufte, Kosslyn and Godin (and Napoleon)

By: Steven Forth

Steven Forth — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 18:54:47 +0000

Perhaps the two second visual bullet for people who are struggling with ADD is about the worst way to present information to anyone who actually needs to make a real decision. I find the kind of chart produced by Seth Godin’s approach mostly useless. I would take Tufte’s approach any day. Is the Monard graph the best? Best for what? I can learn from it though, which is enough for me.

By: Data Visualization « Wayne’s Web Design Blog

Data Visualization « Wayne’s Web Design Blog — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:59:33 +0000

[...] was done centuries before the first computer was ever developed. Charles Minard’s graphic of Napoleon’s March to Russia was dubbed such by Edward Tufte who is renowned as the “The Leonardo da Vinci of data.” [...]

By: LeMel

LeMel — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 23:04:38 +0000

Godin is thinking in PowerPoint terms: He is imagining himself in front of a screen giving a pitch.

Long thoughts are not welcome at that party.

(2 seconds, indeed).

Minard’s chart (and much of Tufte) is about *visual reasoning*, not about delivering key bullet-pointed figures.

By: Janne Pyykkö

Janne Pyykkö — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:32:36 +0000

I think Minard’s graph is really magnificent. Think a parallel approach: Can you create a statistical graph about the World War II? Or by using the Black Book of Communism? What are the measures then? The number of victims of course, what else?

The issue makes the chart (series of charts) worth studying. As we all know, global warming is the issue nowadays, so it’s not a surprise the charts made available by Al Gore were rewarded with the Nobel Prize.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:22:17 +0000

In the same way a writer needs to know the audience he is writing for, a visualization designer has to keep the audience he is presenting to in mind. If the audience is interested in quick facts then a minimalist presentation is better, but if the audience wants to know the detail, then the detail should be presented. This doesn’t make one visualisation better than the other, because the visualizations are saying different things. The inclination to consider Minards visualisation as superior to the pie chart might also be due to the fact that, we tend to give more credit to designs that condense a large amount of detail into something elegant and readable, as this is more difficult to achieve than the minimalist approach.

I agree with Robert in that it’s pointless to try to find the best visualization in a domain that is so subjective. Being the best visualization depends on too many variables and eliminating all these variables is both impractical, and not necessarily desired. The subjectivity of visualizations especially in an uncontrolled environment is one of the reasons why scientific evaluation of visualizations is difficult. On the other hand, this same subjectivity is what makes visualizations so powerful, because the same display can mean different things to different people (even if this is not intended).

By: Robert Kosara

Robert Kosara — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:38:55 +0000

Arguing over “the best statistical graphic ever” is kind of useless, and only takes away from a much more interesting point: the inherent story-telling of graphics, even static ones.

If a visualization or visual representation is only a pipe that pumps data into the brain, then the pie chart perhaps makes more sense. Or better, just use numbers. The “executive summary” can be put much more concisely in a simple sentence or a table of three numbers (total, survivors, deaths) than a pie chart.

But to engage an audience, to find out more about what happened, and to actually care about what the data depicts (the death of 390,000 people!), we need a bit more than a pie chart. That is the power of graphics, that they tell you a story that you will remember. One of the reasons Tufte is so popular is because he tells stories, and these stories stick. A pie chart that looks like any other pie chart will never stick, but a well-designed data-specific graphic like Minard’s will.

I have incidentally posted somewhat similar thoughts (on the subjectivity of visualization) on my own website recently.

By: Matias

Matias — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:30:23 +0000

Minard’s chart requires an effort to be readen, but this effort is much less than the effort needed to read all the information in a table or in a text. The redux-pie version is worse, because reading the chart requires more effort than reading the sentence “2% survived”.
Aside from that, Minard’s chart wasn’t made to nowadays newspapers. So it’s incorrect to think on it as it was published in the New York Times.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:45:16 +0000

I wouldn’t call it the best statistical graphic ever. I feel like Minard’s is labeled best much the same reason that Citizen Kane is considered number one. Albeit, I’m not sure what graphic I would call the best.