ABSTRACT
Remembering an example where a graphic representation clarified a situation or resolved a problem, many of us might be inclined to agree with this statement. However, finding a visual representation of data that perfectly resolves the question at hand is no simple matter. The underlying quantitative relationships are rarely simple, and there is a tension between design goals, such as providing context for meaningful interpretation and simple appearance. As we bring more and more content into a graphic it appears more and more complex, to the point where the graphic becomes cluttered and confusing to the reader. Sometimes the complexity of supplementary information contrasts sharply with the simplicity and sparseness of the data, as in a recent example of a cancer statistics plot, where seven lines of footnotes described important details about six data points for oral cancer among females 2000-2005. Ideally, adding features to the graphic can make the pattern seem simpler or provide a focus to prioritize the information, but we need to be careful not to overly complicate the graphic (“chart junk”; Tufte 1983) (National Cancer Institute 2008a).
