Tables:

Here is a table from the US Environmental Protection Agency from a few years ago. What are the problems with this table?

National Carbon_Monoxide Emissions in 2002
Source Sector Total Emissions
Electricity Generation 652,314
Fires 14,520,530
Fossil Fuel Combustion 1,499,367
Industrial Processes 2,414,055
Miscellaneous 33,786
Non Road Equipment 22,414,896
On Road Vehicles 62,957,908
Residential Wood Combustion 2,704,197
Road Dust 0
Solvent Use 3,294
Waste Disposal 2,018,496

A better version of the table (font, background, alignment):

National Carbon_Monoxide Emissions in 2002
Source Sector  Total Emissions
 Electricity Generation 652,314 
 Fires 14,520,530 
 Fossil Fuel Combustion 1,499,367 
 Industrial Processes 2,414,055 
 Miscellaneous 33,786 
 Non Road Equipment 22,414,896 
 On Road Vehicles 62,957,908 
 Residential Wood Combustion 2,704,197 
 Road Dust 0 
 Solvent Use 3,294 
 Waste Disposal 2,018,496 


Here is a sample table with two values: Yes/No.

Yes
 No
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
Yes
 No
 No
 No
 Yes
No
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
No
 No
 No
 No
 Yes
Yes
 Yes
 No
 No
 Yes

A better version would be:

Yes
 -
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
Yes
 -
 -
 -
 Yes
-
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
-
 -
 -
 -
 Yes
Yes
 Yes
 -
 -
 Yes

Using color to highlight the pattern (one color):

Yes
 No
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
Yes
 No
 No
 No
 Yes
No
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
 Yes
No
 No
 No
 No
 Yes
Yes
 Yes
 No
 No
 Yes
Bar charts:

This is the bar charts of the population of the USA over the last 8 years. The left chart shows how 3D hurts the visualization. The right chart is a less fancy but much more effective in 2D.

Overly 3D chart of US population More readable 2D chart of US population

Pay attentions to the y-axis on the following charts of the same data.

Vertical scale suggesting slow growth   Vertical scale suggesting rapid growth

Here is an example how visualization lies: from Time Magazine (4/9/79) via Tufte. Please avoid this.

Oil Prices Represented as Barrels

Pie charts:

These examples are charts from a recent version of Excel. 3D distorts the view making it more difficult (less accurate as well) to read the visualization.

A 2D version is much better. Picking up the right colors is also helpful: we could use colors to relate consoles. For example, Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 are both in (darker and lighter) blue.


Here is another bad example from Fox news:

Some tables/images on this page were adapted from Visualization and Visual Analytics class at UIC by Prof. Andrew Johnson.
© Last revised: Sep 29th, 2016