I'm in agreement with Will, here. The sparklines on this site don't
provide enough context to be of any use. They raise a lot of questions!
1. What is the time-span we are looking at?
2. As Will pointed out, they haven't broken out losses, injuries, and
deaths, which are very different things. If you are a pet owner, a
death is final. An injury is likely mendable, and a loss may only be
temporary.
3. Obviously, a peak represents 1 incident, but each peak covers a
certain span of time. If you look at ATA, which shows 2 incidents in a
single peak with a flat top, and Atlantic Southeast, which shows 1
incident with a pointed peak, the time-span only differs by 2 pixels.
Granted, I don't know the time scale, but it seems to me the width of
a peak is inaccurate in comparison.
4. What does height of a peak represent? Judging by the airlines with
only a few incidents, it has nothing to do with the amount within a
single time unit, as they have full-height peaks. Midwest reports 4
incidents, but there are only three peaks, two of which are half-
height, and one of which is full height. Then look at Continental with
52 incidents. Its sparkline varies in height quite a bit. This leads
me to believe that height is supposed to correlate to the number of
incidents, but the scale is being changed for each sparkline to make
them fit the given height. If such is the case, no meaningful
comparison can be made between them. They may as well just give the
totals and leave it at that.
Will Evans said:
Agreed, context and scale are important, and breaking out lost,
injured,
killed as three separate information vectors by airline, overtime
without
connecting the information points would have increased information
density
while reducing chart junk.
Actually, Will, chart junk refers to graphics that aren't
communicating data. A sparkline, by definition, is all data. There is
no chart junk. So, breaking out each into a separate vector will
increase the information, but not reduce chart junk. Whether or not it
increases information density depends on how much space is used, of
course. If they are overlaid in the same space, then yes, it would
increase data density.
Best,
Jack
Jack L. Moffett
Interaction Designer
inmedius
412.459.0310 x219
http://www.inmedius.com
There is no good design that is not
based on the understanding of people.
- Stefano Marzano
CEO of Philips Design
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