A certain scholarly technology magazine, which shall remain unnamed, in its current issue, contains a startlingly confusing and downright irresponsible infographic involving floating map pieces coupled with statistics. Now, I’m not your typical overly picky academic-type when it comes to infographics, but this one just blows the mind.
As always, critiques are meant for the betterment of mapping—or in this case infographicking—and aren’t intended as personal attacks. With that in mind, I created this infographic so that it resembles the one in the magazine, but is not exactly the same. All names have been changed to protect the innocent, etc. etc.
So the infographic looks something like what you are looking at above. Here are the problems:
(1) Each state is stretched or shrunk to fit into the grid. Area is not only not preserved, it isn’t even close! Kentucky appears smaller than Connecticut.
(2) The statistics would likely make more sense with respect to where these states are in their context—the U.S.—rather than floating in space.
(3) There isn’t actually a reason to show the states. The infographic could have done just as well to show the percentages next to the state names without the associated geometries.
Those are the three major problems with the infographic. It’s a small list, but each point is pretty important and obvious.
The major lesson here: don’t inject maps into infographics without any reason whatsoever.
#1 by Julie Kanzler on June 3, 2013 - 5:09 am
Wow, that’s shockingly bad. I don’t see any reason not to post the name and author of the article. Authors should expect scholarly discourse.
#2 by jewelia on June 3, 2013 - 1:37 pm
Assuming that the area of each state is not relevant to the article, I’d cut the author a little more slack unless it is a (mapping) technology journal. In this case, the images seem more like “stamps” rather than “geometries”–so I’m not going into shock. Its just boring graphics rather than shocking.
But then, consider that the author might be from Connecticut or Vermont and, given size matters and that Connecticut and Vermont are just as big as California=> each having a political weight of “one” as states, “2” in the Senate, and nobody cares about the graticule-locked House. What I want to know is how Kentucky scored 120% in anything…. well just saying area is not the only way to depict things.
Okay, the author doesn’t look to be making a brilliant abstract statement–but if you abbreviate the states, then you have all that white space and the editor says you have to fill in this block because she doesn’t want her journal to look have full (or empty). Could be just a regretful last-minute page-filler.
But, you did right by leaving the name of the author out of the blog. Scholarly discourse about the article should take place through the auspices of the particular journal.
Just tossing some things about because I’m tired of doing ArcGIS tutorials and the weather outside is 120% cicadas most of the time.
#3 by Gretchen on June 5, 2013 - 4:30 pm
@jewelia and @Julie Thanks for your great insights!