WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:01.680 Okay, so we've also talked 2 00:00:01.680 --> 00:00:03.780 about scales a little bit before, right? 3 00:00:03.780 --> 00:00:05.700 When we looked at this masterclass 4 00:00:05.700 --> 00:00:09.960 and three charts changing the scales made a huge difference. 5 00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:12.630 We also changed charts, we changed a bunch 6 00:00:12.630 --> 00:00:14.910 of different things but the scales was sort 7 00:00:14.910 --> 00:00:17.100 of the major difference between this chart, trillions 8 00:00:17.100 --> 00:00:20.490 of dollars in time, this chart share of wealth 9 00:00:20.490 --> 00:00:23.340 and median age, two very, very important changes, 10 00:00:23.340 --> 00:00:27.570 and this one share of population share of wealth. 11 00:00:27.570 --> 00:00:29.700 So very important decisions 12 00:00:29.700 --> 00:00:32.880 that made these charts tell dramatically different stories, 13 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:36.240 enabled the audience to understand certain things. 14 00:00:36.240 --> 00:00:37.170 Okay, good. 15 00:00:37.170 --> 00:00:39.826 So we know we wanna make smart decisions about scales. 16 00:00:39.826 --> 00:00:42.420 I'll point out a couple of other little things. 17 00:00:42.420 --> 00:00:44.276 So in this chart, very, very simple chart. 18 00:00:44.276 --> 00:00:47.100 There's no scale, right? 19 00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:50.760 The bars have numbers on them, they're labeled, 20 00:00:50.760 --> 00:00:54.180 so that essentially establishes the scale. 21 00:00:54.180 --> 00:00:55.620 You can do it this way, right? 22 00:00:55.620 --> 00:00:57.360 If you just have a bar or two bars you don't have 23 00:00:57.360 --> 00:00:59.160 to literally put in a box where you have scales 24 00:00:59.160 --> 00:01:01.320 on the actual lines or whatever. 25 00:01:01.320 --> 00:01:03.900 The bars themselves act as the scale. 26 00:01:03.900 --> 00:01:07.170 That's okay, as long as I know what I'm looking at 27 00:01:07.170 --> 00:01:09.060 and I can make whatever comparison 28 00:01:09.060 --> 00:01:12.120 or understanding I need to make, that's all right. 29 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:12.953 So don't think you have 30 00:01:12.953 --> 00:01:14.550 to literally create a standardized chart 31 00:01:14.550 --> 00:01:17.539 with a traditional scale the way you think of it. 32 00:01:17.539 --> 00:01:21.000 Also, when we're looking at decisions 33 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:23.893 about scales we can make smart decisions. 34 00:01:23.893 --> 00:01:25.980 For instance, here we have a line 35 00:01:25.980 --> 00:01:27.639 that's going up and coming down. 36 00:01:27.639 --> 00:01:29.849 Here is an example where we're showing plus 37 00:01:29.849 --> 00:01:33.240 and minus, a percentage change, right? 38 00:01:33.240 --> 00:01:36.360 That's a thoughtful decision to show what happened 39 00:01:36.360 --> 00:01:39.840 to this value, not as actual values, but as rates. 40 00:01:39.840 --> 00:01:41.040 Like we've talked about a hundred times, 41 00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:42.858 how important it is to think about 42 00:01:42.858 --> 00:01:45.030 whether the values are useful or the rates are useful. 43 00:01:45.030 --> 00:01:48.450 Whether we want to show the actual numbers or in this case 44 00:01:48.450 --> 00:01:49.860 how much did it go up or down? 45 00:01:49.860 --> 00:01:52.230 We're not even showing the numbers themselves, 46 00:01:52.230 --> 00:01:54.810 we're just showing only showing change. 47 00:01:54.810 --> 00:01:57.630 That's a valid decision for what we put in the scale. 48 00:01:57.630 --> 00:02:00.987 Now, on top of that, if we wanted to, we could use color 49 00:02:00.987 --> 00:02:05.987 to emphasize what's going on with that change, right? 50 00:02:06.150 --> 00:02:10.170 So the gray line means it only went up by a certain amount. 51 00:02:10.170 --> 00:02:12.660 Blue means it went up by a lot, it's steeper 52 00:02:12.660 --> 00:02:15.240 so we're sort of, it deserves a color now. 53 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:18.360 Orange means it came down by a lot again, more so 54 00:02:18.360 --> 00:02:20.070 than the other down portion. 55 00:02:20.070 --> 00:02:22.894 We're emphasizing that scale, that the change 56 00:02:22.894 --> 00:02:26.171 and the value by adding color to it. 57 00:02:26.171 --> 00:02:30.510 We can even use other things here. 58 00:02:30.510 --> 00:02:32.460 So we're showing data. 59 00:02:32.460 --> 00:02:34.590 Same exact data that we saw before. 60 00:02:34.590 --> 00:02:36.885 Made the background a little bit brighter, whatever bolder 61 00:02:36.885 --> 00:02:40.920 but now the number, the final value is popping 62 00:02:40.920 --> 00:02:42.690 off the page a little bit more. 63 00:02:42.690 --> 00:02:46.950 So it's not really necessarily a scale conversation 64 00:02:46.950 --> 00:02:49.320 at this point, it's more of a design tweak 65 00:02:49.320 --> 00:02:51.630 to highlight the important stuff. 66 00:02:51.630 --> 00:02:54.330 This is a typography decision 67 00:02:54.330 --> 00:02:56.070 but of course it's in the scale. 68 00:02:56.070 --> 00:02:58.511 The scale is a place where I can emphasize things. 69 00:02:58.511 --> 00:03:00.745 I could label that data point itself 70 00:03:00.745 --> 00:03:03.690 or I can literally put it on the scale itself. 71 00:03:03.690 --> 00:03:05.580 There's a million different ways to do these things. 72 00:03:05.580 --> 00:03:08.010 There's no one right or wrong way 73 00:03:08.010 --> 00:03:11.220 for just about any decision in data visualization. 74 00:03:11.220 --> 00:03:13.230 Last but not least, there was this great thread 75 00:03:13.230 --> 00:03:16.140 in the New York Times couple years ago, this is 76 00:03:16.140 --> 00:03:18.090 from 2020 I believe during the pandemic, 77 00:03:18.090 --> 00:03:21.466 so early in the pandemic and the New York Times had changed 78 00:03:21.466 --> 00:03:25.337 how they were mapping Coronavirus data. 79 00:03:25.337 --> 00:03:27.750 And it's a very subtle change 80 00:03:27.750 --> 00:03:29.490 and this guy wrote this thread about it. 81 00:03:29.490 --> 00:03:31.503 Essentially, the basic idea was this, 82 00:03:32.520 --> 00:03:35.490 we have county level data, but the data, the map 83 00:03:35.490 --> 00:03:39.390 on the right, this one over here is different. 84 00:03:39.390 --> 00:03:41.310 And the reason is because there's a footnote 85 00:03:41.310 --> 00:03:43.350 at the bottom of the map that says, "Parts of a county 86 00:03:43.350 --> 00:03:45.900 with a population density lower than 10 people 87 00:03:45.900 --> 00:03:49.920 per square mile are not shaded". 88 00:03:49.920 --> 00:03:54.920 So the point is, sometimes when you have a choropleth map, 89 00:03:55.620 --> 00:04:00.090 that's where you have the shape of the region is colored in 90 00:04:00.090 --> 00:04:03.690 to represent the value of whatever is being measured 91 00:04:03.690 --> 00:04:05.400 like we see in election maps. 92 00:04:05.400 --> 00:04:07.290 And as we described with those election maps 93 00:04:07.290 --> 00:04:09.523 that very first map that was all red and blue, 94 00:04:09.523 --> 00:04:12.035 there's something misleading about that. 95 00:04:12.035 --> 00:04:15.840 Montana a giant state looks like it's really important 96 00:04:15.840 --> 00:04:18.179 and has a huge Republican influence 97 00:04:18.179 --> 00:04:19.950 but it's actually less important 98 00:04:19.950 --> 00:04:22.740 than Rhode Island, which is tiny, you can barely see it. 99 00:04:22.740 --> 00:04:25.230 On top of that, or sort of related to that, 100 00:04:25.230 --> 00:04:28.770 I suppose is the fact that it's about population density. 101 00:04:28.770 --> 00:04:33.180 So the New York Times, not wanting to alarm people unfairly 102 00:04:33.180 --> 00:04:36.060 where this state over here giant state might be doing poorly 103 00:04:36.060 --> 00:04:38.400 their Coronavirus numbers are going up 104 00:04:38.400 --> 00:04:40.500 but at the same time, hardly anybody lives there. 105 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:43.470 So maybe by essentially not coloring 106 00:04:43.470 --> 00:04:46.200 in counties that have very low population density 107 00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:49.473 or portions of counties there, it sort of de-emphasizes it. 108 00:04:49.473 --> 00:04:51.600 It's sort of saying that yes, the numbers may be going 109 00:04:51.600 --> 00:04:55.320 up over here, but the overall impact isn't as large. 110 00:04:55.320 --> 00:04:58.260 So similar to those maps that we saw Kenneth Field did 111 00:04:58.260 --> 00:05:00.600 where different ways of treating that election data 112 00:05:00.600 --> 00:05:03.540 so the land wasn't as emphasized, it maybe was more 113 00:05:03.540 --> 00:05:05.550 about the number of people, et cetera. 114 00:05:05.550 --> 00:05:07.290 Just more ways of thinking about that. 115 00:05:07.290 --> 00:05:09.510 This is a scale decision, right? 116 00:05:09.510 --> 00:05:13.350 How do we set the scales for how the colors behave on a map? 117 00:05:13.350 --> 00:05:15.000 And also do we even include them? 118 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:16.080 Is there a threshold at 119 00:05:16.080 --> 00:05:18.840 which we don't even bother doing anything? 120 00:05:18.840 --> 00:05:22.320 So it's a scale conversation, but it goes beyond that. 121 00:05:22.320 --> 00:05:25.857 This is just how are we communicating the stuff 122 00:05:25.857 --> 00:05:28.323 our audience needs to hear.