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Calling Out GE's Misleading Data Visualizations
theodp writes "Stephen Few never did suffer data visualization fools gladly. After seeing an oil exec (mis)use data viz to put a positive spin on Gulf Oil Spill cleanup efforts, Few felt compelled to call out BP. And now it's General Electric that's got Few's dander up: 'The series of interactive data visualizations that have appeared on GE's website over the last two years,' writes Few, 'has provided a growing pool of silly examples. They attempt to give the superficial impression that GE cares about data while in fact providing almost useless content. They look fun, but communicate little. As such, they suggest that GE does not in fact care about the information and has little respect for the intelligence and interests of its audience. This is a shame, because the stories contained in these data sets are important.' Concerned about his strong reactions to poorly designed data visualizations, Few asked his neuropsychologist wife whether he might be overreacting. She, too, agrees that GE's natural gas visualizations are maddening, which one might be tempted to dismiss as predictable, although Eyeo Festival presenter Michal Migurski also declares GE's effort 'one terrible, terrible bit of nonsense.'"
I don't get the use of the Sierpinski triangle, Apollonian gasket, and Sierpinski carpet style shapes for representing each fuel source. I haven't looked at much data visualization, but it doesn't seem the use of these doesn't add anything.
I don't know much about visualization either, but this one is really obvious. Empty spaces add perceived volume to the graph, so that it looks bigger (compared to the full square that show how much we use each year). Our brains don't know how to calculate the percentage of empty space into the perceived size.
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Adjust the sliders to match the production increases over the last ten years, and you get 38 years left for oil, 42 years left for natural gas, and 44 years left for coal. Which makes the premise that "The World has Huge Natural Gas Reserves" totally false, unless you have no children and only expect to live for 40 years or less.
How many years of Sunlight Reserves do we have left?
Over 4,000,000,000 years.
Do you need a visualization to understand the difference between 40 years and 4,000,000,000 years?
Marketing folk are malicious.
Maybe the summary could actually try to summarize what is going on. For example it could let us know:
* Who is Stephen Few? Is he an expert in this filed or some random blogger?
* What data on the GE website are they talking about? If there are many different sets of data give an example of one.
* What is 'Eyeo Festival'?
Providing some basic context lets us know whether TFA is worth reading - as is stands it just bunch of meaningless drivel.