the anti experience of Ed

Admittedly, I’m a chart geek. I have copies of all the relevant Tufte books. I feel that I know a deceptive or misleading chart when I see one.

Let’s look at this one at cnn.com, about obesity rates in the US.

At first glance, I noted, damn, look at the red, the south sure is fat. And what’s up with Michigan? How is Indiana, Ohio and Illinois this strip of thinness in the bulging belly of the midwest? What’s going on in those states? Then I looked more closely.

What’s going on here? The color (specifically the intensities of the red and blue shades) aren’t scaling evenly at all. A state could be 24 percent obese (according to their standard, of course) and in the land of the gray-blueish healthy people, but be 25 percent obese and be in a horrible, red, fat fat fat land. This sensationalistic and fundamentally unsound color shading methodology is horribly oversimplifying and misrepresenting the issues and data. The progression of colors, bluntly, is not granular or linear enough.

This is very deceptive and unhelpful to anyone who doesn’t look at the information presented carefully.

Stupid and bad chart, cnn.com.