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comment by zebra2
zebra2  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 25 Amazing Food Infographics, Drawn From 49,733 Recipes

There's some cool bits of info on here, but looking at fancy infographics always make me think the same thing: the people who make these should take a class on presenting data that isn't aimed at designers.

So much of the data is poorly presented for the sake of minimalism or other design aesthetics. Who thought it would be a good idea to take a simple X Y graph and curve one axis? It completely destroys my ability to extract any information out of it. The first chart: what trend am I supposed to be seeing here? The presentation of the data makes it seem like there isn't much of one.

Or what about this one:

http://www.wired.com/design/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/TG-4....

The title says good stuffing has lots of ingredients, but does the data even say that? The only data points are the 5 top rated recipes, not ranked in any way, and joined by some pointless shape fill. Am I missing something? (Barely) three of the data points are on the side of more ingredients (which is how many? you can't even see) and we're supposed to believe a trend here?

There's all sorts of lousy data presentation and sketchy data interpretation smeared across this (or practically any) infographic set.





BlackBird  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I feel a bit sheepish now, posting something that isn't as good as I thought it was; at least I'm learning from you and veen the why behind it being misleading/misrepresentative/crap.

zebra2  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Don't feel bad for posting something that has flaws. You're not expected to agree 100% with anything you post, and it's always the discussion that matters most. I like to rant about designers' blunders with data display so I'm glad you posted it.

BlackBird  ·  4043 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Well, that's put a positive spin on it all, cheers!