they really ought to sort out that website

Hi Max, I have a feeling that non-trivial/ useful visualisations, or rather visualisations of non-trivial subject matter tend to have lower prominence because their main aim isn't about looking nice and easily digestible (cf most of the stuff getting reblogged round the web) but getting information across in a way that reveals it's properties. Obviously looking nice helps in any visualisation but it's not something the designers here are particularly interested in (would they even think of themselves as deisgners? I suspect not). That the creators of the stadium evac video can assume a certain amount of audience engagement simply because of the subject matter probably reinforces the lack of need for visual polish. Related: Lulu recently pointed out a job ad for ‘Associate Analyst – Infographics’ at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. http://lulupinney.co.uk/2011/01/impartial-and-objective-infographics/ -Tom

(Most delayed response to a commebnt ever!) I was not able to move all 10% of the votes to a party to another party, that is, to make a party rate +10%, another party rate -10% and the third one unchanged That is possible Tic, but depending on what parties you choose it may be a two step process. Our ternary plot prototype showed it was really tricky to adjust accurately, moving the mouse in precise direction and increment over a 2d plane is much more chanenging than sliding it round a single dimension. I recently wrote a blog post about the development of the app... http://blog.pointlineplane.co.uk/post/2174827384/case-study-seat-calculator

Well, why is digital on the decline? What mysterious series are we missing there? That's the problem with the chart, the area of the red digital section is actually getting larger but the steep overall decline serves to obscure this trend. As a previous comenter noted bringing the new values in from the bottom would address this problem a bit on this chart. Also the top line - overall sales - could be strengthened visually unifying all the subvesctions to empasise that this is overall figures. But yeah, the chart is flawed and the lack of information about whether this is inflation adjusted is really a killer.

This surname map of london is similar addresses some of the issues you have ... http://spatialanalysis.co.uk/2011/01/24/mapping-londons-surnames/ ... each surname is positioned on top of an area of roughly equal population. The presentation method seems to work better at city scale where population is - very roughly - evenly distributed at least by comparison with the whole of the US.

Hi, I built the BBC's version of this app so thanks for the kind words. We tried several different interface mechanisms before settling on the pie-chart control. First up we tried a ternary plot with a moveable point, this had the disadvantage of being limited to 3 parties and we wanted to show 'others' in order to closely link the graphic to opinion poll data (or more specific parties in the future, perhaps for Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly election etc.). Also the ternary plot is perhaps a little bit esoteric for a general audience. A set of sliders was unsatisfactory as the UI for locking unlocking different party sliders and determining from which party votes should flow to which other party was a usability nightmare where more than 3 sliders are concerned, plus there are potential editorial policy issues (i.e. we might be open to accusations of bias if by default votes transfered to a particular party). I think the pie control is intuitive (whatever we think about pie charts everyone understands how they work) and the only real draw back is, as Kaiser points out, that unrealistic scenarios are available to users. We hoped to guide people as to what 'realistic' scenarios would be with the links to current opinion polls and historical vote shares. We considered limiting the range of the pie sections but where do you draw the lines? and in all honesty playing with the full range is sort of fun and hopefully illuminating as to the mechanics and shortcomings of the model. With regard to the proportional representation, we chose that not only because the traditional geographic map gives the physically larger traditional Conservative and Lib Dem seats disproportionate visual prominence but also in order to further emphasise the crude nature of the uniform national swing model. For the same reason we don't give information on which hexagon represents which constituency (though the identities of some are obvious and most can be worked out by an astute reader with time on their hands).

I disagree that the taxation graphic is pointless. It does not obviously misrepresent the data and whilst it may be difficult to read specific data points from it gives an interesting and concise overview of US taxation system over the century. There are clear discontinuities corresponding with historical events; war, depression, the Reagan years. That said, the chart is not "glancable", it requires the reader to engage with it (and it assumes some knowledge on their part), I think it rewards this effort. If it's lacking anything I think it's in adding context to the data, perhaps a plot of how GDP or income distribution changed over the same time or marking key events which precipitated changes in taxation policy...

I think the problem here with decimals isn't just about readability but also implied accuracy. Inflation adjusted figures are never going to be precise facts, as inflation doesn't apply equally to all categories of goods or even all goods within a given category they're more like guides to aid comparison, show affordability in context. Also what does bar thickness represent? Are the values shown as areas. Confusing.

Worth mentioning: Not only does it aid with composition but arranging the plots alphabetically also helps you to find specific countries' data easily.