A recently popular chart from GE and Ben Fry attempted to show the cost of various illnesses across population, attempting to show the high cost of healthcare. Robert Kosara (@eagereyes) took issue with the chart (as did many others) and thought he could do better, and recently published his attempts. His came up with some very interesting visualizations (such as the one to the right), but his biggest discovery was this:
There is something even more concerning that I discovered here than simply a bad chart: a gratuitous visualization. The data is mind-numbingly dull. The pretty, interactive, animated visualization was simply there to cover up that fact. Perhaps if people can play with a rotating pie thingy they won't actually question the data?
This is a rarely discussed problem: Visualization makes unexciting data look interesting. While not at severe as presenting data to draw incorrect assumptions, it’s still never a good thing to “trick” people into wasting time on uninteresting data.
