Gestalt Principles

• Gestalt principles describe how the human eye perceives visual elements.

Cont.

• Complex scenes are reduced to simple shapes.
• The eyes perceive shapes as a single, united form rather than the separate simpler elements involved.

Tables vs. Pictures

Best of Both Worlds: The Web

Friends don’t let friends…

• Clearly indicates the nature of the relationship? (Yes)
• Represents the quantities accurately? (No)
• Makes it easy to compare the quantities? (No)
• Makes it easy to see the ranked order of values? (No)
• Makes obvious how people should use the information? (Partially)

• Clearly indicates the nature of the relationship? (Yes)
• Represents the quantities accurately? (Yes)
• Makes it easy to compare the quantities? (Yes)
• Makes it easy to see the ranked order of values? (Yes)
• Makes obvious how people should use the information? (Yes)

Skewing the y-axis

Fixed

No context

Fixed

No Perspective

The only #climatechange chart you need to see. http://natl.re/wPKpro - National Review

Fixed

Misleading story

Fixed

Lies, plain and simple

Fixed

Getting Started

# Install the software
install.packages("datasauRus")
require(datasauRus)

head(
  datasauRus::datasaurus_dozen
)

## # A tibble: 6 x 3
##   dataset       x       y
##     <chr>   <dbl>   <dbl>
## 1    dino 55.3846 97.1795
## 2    dino 51.5385 96.0256
## 3    dino 46.1538 94.4872
## 4    dino 42.8205 91.4103
## 5    dino 40.7692 88.3333
## 6    dino 38.7179 84.8718

Data

Graphs