{"id":172226,"date":"2021-03-05T12:24:44","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T12:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/samathieson.com\/sa-mathieson\/?p=172226"},"modified":"2024-08-01T12:43:25","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T11:43:25","slug":"editing-whats-on-and-off-the-graph","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/samathieson.com\/sa-mathieson\/editing-whats-on-and-off-the-graph\/","title":{"rendered":"Editing what’s on and off the graph"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government\u2019s Halloween press conference was an obvious example to use in my article for Computer Weekly<\/a> on the good, bad and ugly of data visualisation during the pandemic. Before one slide headed \u2018England new SPI-M combined projection bed usage\u2019, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance actually said \u201cthis is a complicated slide\u201d. No argument there (see below). Professor Chris Whitty charged through 10 slides in under seven minutes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Vallance<\/p>\n

Rob Fry, head of data visualisation at the Office for National Statistics, tells ONS staff to pick a key message then design graphs around that: \u201cYou\u2019ll avoid the temptation of trying to cram too much into the chart,\u201d he told me. Fry was talking about how the ONS works rather than criticising anyone else, but his advice could usefully be taken elsewhere in government.<\/p>\n

In some cases, data visualisations miss things they should include. Andy Cotgreave at Tableau redesigned a BBC chart produced near the start of the pandemic<\/a>, which gave the impression that anyone over-80 catching Covid-19 was as good as dead by ending its x-axis at 15%. Cotgreave\u2019s version (below) included the survivors.<\/p>\n

\"Andy
\nEditing involves deciding what is and isn\u2019t important, and graphics need editing at least as much as words do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government\u2019s Halloween press conference was an obvious example to use in my article for Computer Weekly on the good, bad and ugly of data visualisation during the pandemic. Before one slide headed \u2018England new SPI-M combined projection bed usage\u2019, chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance actually said \u201cthis is a complicated slide\u201d. No argument … Continue reading “Editing what’s on and off the graph”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2,363,6,7,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-data","category-healthcare","category-hospitals","category-maps","category-media"],"yoast_head":"\nEditing what's on and off the graph - SA Mathieson<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The government\u2019s Halloween press conference was an obvious example for my Computer Weekly article on Covid-19 graphs and data visualisation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/samathieson.com\/sa-mathieson\/editing-whats-on-and-off-the-graph\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Editing what's on and off the graph - 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