Information is hard

Many of you are probably familiar with Information is Beautiful, a blog that attempts to demonstrate how complex information can be presented in a clear, transparent and visually pleasing manner. They usually succeed, but the latest entry is an absolute horror:

This is not beautiful information. This is a textbook example of information design gone bad. The symbology and colors (pale blue suits for men and pale pink dresses for women), which I find offensive, may be a matter of taste, but the following are matters of fact:

• There is no clear explanation of what the numbers, the lengths of the bars or the number of silhouettes on each row mean. In fact, there is no explanation whatsoever of what the number of silhouettes or the bars on the right mean.
• The infographic is supposed to show the gender distribution for various social web sites, but there is no way to actually compare the data for each gender, because the data sets are entirely disjoint.
• There is no indication of how the data support the conclusion (“99 million more monthly female visitors”).
• There is a link to a Google spreadsheet containing the raw data, but no explanation of how they were collected, selected and collated.

The only way this infographic can be characterized as beautiful is if you are particularly fond of pastel colors and you print it out and hang it on your wall someplace where you will never get close enough to actually be able to read the text, i.e. if you have no interest whatsoever in the data or the message it is supposed to convey.

I can think of several ways to better present this information:

• as a bar chart with one column for each site, with each column containing either:

  • side-by-side bars for each gender, with the height of each bar representing either the relative percentage or the absolute number of visitors;
  • stacked bars for each gender, with the height of each bar representing either the relative percentage or the absolute number of visitors;

  sorted, in each case by the relative percentage of either gender;

• something akin to a population pyramid, with one row for each site, each row having one bar on each side of the axis showing the number of visitors of each gender in absolute numbers, sorted (for purely aesthetic reasons) by total number of visitors.

Whichever representation you choose, the infographic is meaningless unless it allows the viewer to actually compare the data, meaning that you have to show data for both genders for each site.

Bensinpriser

Petter Reinholdtsen skrev nylig om Bitfactorys bensinpris-app (iOS, Android) og mangelen på dokumentasjon av protokollen den bruker for å laste ned priser fra databasen deres.

Jeg har lenge lurt på hvorfor ikke Forbrukerombudet pålegger stasjoner å rapportere inn prisene slik at forbrukere kan sammenligne før de velger hvor de skal fylle. Det kan hende at de mener at det er nok konkurranse i markedet, eller at det ville være en urimelig kostnad. Sistnevnte er imidlertid ikke et holdbart argument iom. at alt er automatisert; det ville aldri være snakk om manuell innrapportering.

Problemet er at selv om stasjonene følger med på konkurrentenes priser og justerer sine egne priser deretter, så er det vanskelig for forbrukerne å dra nytte av denne konkurransen. Jeg passerer 8 bensinstasjoner på vei til jobb, men ikke alle har prisskilt som er synlige fra veien, så jeg ville måtte svinge innom alle sammen for å finne ut hva prisen er, og deretter kjøre tilbake til den billigste. Det nytter ikke å sjekke prisene på morgenen og fylle på kvelden, siden prisene endres flere ganger om dagen.

Resultatet er at jeg stort sett gir beng og fyller på Statoil på Bjerke annenhver mandag morgen, fordi rabatten jeg har der som regel overstiger prisdifferansen mellom denne stasjonen og det billigste alternativet.

(det er selvfølgelig mulig å få tilsvarende rabatter hos andre kjeder, men jeg kjenner ikke til noen avtaler som er like gode som Statoil-avtalen til NAF – selv ikke 365 Direkte, som hevder å være best i landet på bensin – og jeg vil helst ikke måtte sjonglere et halvt dusin rabattkort og kredittkort)

Mange i Oslo kan til og med risikere å oppleve at det, i snitt, koster mer å undersøke prisen før de fyller enn å bare fylle på nærmeste stasjon, fordi de må krysse bomringen for å komme til andre stasjoner i nærheten.

I en idéell verden hadde altså Forbrukerombudet hatt en kontinuerlig oppdatert oversikt over bensinpriser, på samme måte som Post- og teletilsynet har en kontinuerlig oppdatert prisoversikt for telefoni og bredbånd. Bitfactory kunne fortsatt tjent penger på å selge en app som er bedre enn den Forbrukerombudet selv eventuelt tilbød, og ville dessuten spare utgiftene de har med å vedlikeholde databasen.

Sherlock

Having watched season 1 and the first episode of season 2 of Sherlock, I absolutely love the show, although 2x01 was very weird; very slow, very drawn-out, you think they've wrapped it up then discover that it was just the beginning. A bit like those games I shall not name where you play for 20 or 30 hours before you realize that was just the tutorial.

As a long-time Sherlock Holmes fan who has read all the stories and all four novels at least twice, I was very impressed by how faithful they managed to remain to the original despite moving it 120 years forward in time. All the episodes I've seen so far stick fairly close to the plot of one or two of the original stories, with a load of (often tongue-in-cheek) references to others.

The greatest departures I've seen so far are in the secondary characters: Mycroft is less sedentary than in the original stories, Moriarty is younger and crazier, and Lestrade is far more likeable and far more respectful of Holmes's intellect and methods (the original character is described in very unflattering terms and is often resentful of Holmes's success and not above taking the credit for Holmes's work).

Many self-proclaimed Sherlock Holmes fan are very critical of this series and of the Guy Ritchie movies. I disagree; I suspect that their dissatisfaction stems from a skewed view of Holmes, from reading the original text through the lens of an interminable series of movies and TV series where Holmes is depicted as an elderly, pot-bellied, gray-haired upper-class gentleman. In that respect, they're not unlike those Hunger Games fans who were shocked to see so many dark-skinned actors in the movie, despite the fact that the characters they portray are described as such in the novels.

The Guy Ritchie movies are obviously a reimagining rather than an adaptation, bearing little relationship to the plot of any of the original stories, but I think they're quite faithful to the spirit of Sherlock Holmes. Their pace is obviously much faster, but that is Ritchie's signature—cf. Tom Lehrer's brilliant take on Oh My Darling, Clementine.