Dr. Richard Brath is a data visualization expert who also blogs from time to time. Each post in Richard’s blog provides a deep, and often unexpected to me, insight into one dataviz aspect or another.
We create visualizations to aid viewers in making visual inferences. Different visualizations are suited to different inferences. Some visualizations offer more additional perceptual inferences over comparable visualizations. That is, the specific configuration enables additional inferences to be observed directly, without additional cognitive load. (e.g. see Gem Stapleton et al, Effective Representation of Information: Generalizing Free Rides2016).
Here’s an example from 1940, a bar chart where both bar length and width indicate data:
The length of the bar (horizontally) is the percent increase in income in each industry. Manufacturing has the biggest increase in income (18%), Contract Construction is second at 13%.
The width of the bar (vertically) is the relative size of that industry: Manufacturing is wide – it’s the biggest industry – it accounts for about 23% of all industry. Contract Construction is narrow, perhaps the third smallest industry, perhaps around 3-4%.
What’s really interesting is that
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Boris Gorelik 