goals of visualization:
tension between these two
Noren (2011)
Justin Talbot (“an information visualization researcher with a foot in the statistics world”)
Effective communication is getting messages across. Thus it implies someone else: it is about an audience, and it suggests that we get this audience to understand something. To ensure that they understand it, we must first get them to pay attention. In turn, getting them to understand is usually nothing but a means to an end: we may want them to remember the material communicated, be convinced of it, or ultimately, act or at least be able to act on the basis of it.
Architectural features are continually tacked on buildings with which they have no connection, merely for the sake of what is termed effect; and ornaments are actually constructed, instead of forming the decoration of construction, to which in good taste they should always be subservient
“statistical graphics does seem predominantly a very conservative field. All of the really important ideas used at all frequently were in place by 1900; computing has had only one main effect, making those graphs easier to produce; with notable exceptions the interest in statistical graphics remains in paper-printable 2D graphics, with only marginal interest in anything dynamic, interactive or animated.”
(Gelman 2011)
Infovis people … think pie charts are OK … and they love bubble plots … \[they believe that\] form should follow function. If you have a bunch of numbers that add up to a constant, then a pie chart displays this partitioning. Similarly, if you are displaying quantities, counts, or volumes, a bubble chart is logical because you’re showing physical areas. In contrast, displaying volumes as locations (as in a dot plot) is not natural at all: form is not following function, and this might help to explain why non-statisticians can get confused by such a plot.
Bateman, Scott, Regan L. Mandryk, Carl Gutwin, Aaron Genest, David McDine, and Christopher Brooks. 2010. “Useful Junk?: The Effects of Visual Embellishment on Comprehension and Memorability of Charts.” In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2573–82. ACM.
Borkin, Michelle A., Zoya Bylinskii, Nam Wook Kim, Constance May Bainbridge, Chelsea S. Yeh, Daniel Borkin, Hanspeter Pfister, and Aude Oliva. 2016. “Beyond Memorability: Visualization Recognition and Recall.” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 22 (1): 519–28. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2015.2467732.
Doumont, Jean-Luc. 2009. Trees, Maps, and Theorems Effective Communication for Rational Minds. Kraainem: Principiae.
Gelman, Andrew. 2011. “Infovis, Infographics, and Data Visualization: Where I’m Coming from, and Where I’d Like to Go.” Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. http://andrewgelman.com/2011/08/29/infovis-infographics-and-data-visualization-where-im-coming-from-and-where-id-like-to-go/.
Gelman, Andrew, and Antony Unwin. 2013. “Infovis and Statistical Graphics: Different Goals, Different Looks.” Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 22 (1): 2–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/10618600.2012.761137.
Kosara, Robert. 2013. “InfoVis Is So Much More: A Comment on Gelman and Unwin and an Invitation to Consider the Opportunities.” Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 22 (1): 29–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/10618600.2012.755465.
Murrell, Paul. 2013. “InfoVis and Statistical Graphics: Comment.” Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics 22 (1): 33–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/10618600.2012.751875.
Noren, Laura. 2011. “Cost of Health Care by Country.” Graphic Sociology. https://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2011/04/26/cost-of-health-care-by-country-national-geographic/.
Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore. 1853. The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture: Set Forth in Two Lectures Delivered at St. Marie’s, Oscott. H. G. Bohn. https://books.google.ca/books?id=QphZAAAAYAAJ.
