Charts

The basic types of charts include line charts, area charts, bar charts, scatterplots and pie charts. How should you decide which one to use? And how can we make them?

Housekeeping

• Project timeline. Are you on track for success?
• It’s about time you critiqued something of ours. What’s your take on these pictures from a comet? Or, since that one is so obviously awesome, what about this map and charts about the drought, which Amanda and Kevin disagree about? (We’ll talk more about droughts later.)

More lecture than we’ve ever had before

• Choosing a good chart and a reduced version
• What are you trying to say?
• How can you use design to help you say it? and for tables
• Some chart examples
• Some general design help or more

Your goal

• More droughts! Before class is over, post line chart showing the percent of California in moderate to exceptional drought since 2005, based on this source. If you feel like a boss, make a bar chart for each state’s most recent value. Post it to your github page.
• Style a paragraph of text below your chart, borrowing inspriration from the way Medium styles their paragraphs

Your team choices

• Team Excel
  • You might follow Cole Nussbaumer’s guide.
• Team Service
  • You might try out Datawrapper or Chartbuilder
• Team Be in Charge
  • You might try out D3

Variance has a nice description of some of the trade-offs. And people are working on tools, like Lyra, that blend some of your options.

Project blitz

Homework

Continue to make tangible progress on your project. Are you on track for success?