For my final project, I created an interactive plot titled “Offenders Who Were Electrocuted Had Higher Victim Counts” to explore whether the number of victims is related to the method of execution in the United States. The visualization combines bar charts and line graphs to show both total execution counts and method-specific proportions across three victim count groups. I received helpful feedback from Jane, Patrick, and Jacquelin, and I made a few small but meaningful adjustments in response.
Jane mentioned that the original title was a little unclear on first read. I had originally used “Do More Victims Mean Harsher Methods?” but agreed that it could be more direct. I revised it to “Offenders Who Were Electrocuted Had Higher Victim Counts,” which communicates the main point more clearly and better matches the plot.
Patrick suggested using a stacked bar chart to more clearly show the relative proportions of each method. However, I chose to keep the dual-axis format because it separates the overall counts (shown as bars) from the proportions (shown as lines), allowing the viewer to compare both at once. Instead of switching to a stacked format, I improved the hover tooltips in the interactive version so that viewers can easily access proportion and count information. I also added percent labels to the lines to make proportions clearer at a glance.
Jacquelin suggested simplifying the visuals by sticking to just one chart type. In this case, I intentionally used both bars and lines together to show two related metrics without overwhelming the plot. The left y-axis shows total executions, and the right y-axis shows the proportion of executions by method. I double-checked that the formatting was clean and easy to interpret and that both types of visuals were necessary to communicate the story.
Overall, I kept the original structure of the visualization because it was intentional and functionally informative, but I improved the wording and interactivity based on feedback. The final version is hosted on RPubs as an interactive plot that allows users to explore execution patterns by method and victim count group.