The picture of the elephant is not a good one.
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UPDATE: Jed Christiansen comments on Midas Oracle…
There’s only one problem with this type of chart. It scales each dimension by the relative percentage instead of the area by the relative percentage. Edward Tufte has been discussing this (and campaigning against it) for years.
What people understand is relative size; in other words, relative area. For example, take Barack Obama at 45% and compare it to Al Gore at 9%. Gore looks absolutely tiny compared to Obama, but the market really says he has 1/6 of the support that Obama does. The NewsFutures graphic scales each dimension by 1/6, so it makes him look like the market says he has 1/36 of the support that Obama does. This technique really emphasizes the front-runners, at the expense of the second-tier.
It should be a simple fix, but unfortunately it’s a very common mistake when trying to put one-dimensional data in a two-dimensional context.
UPDATE #2: Emile Servan-Schreiber of NewsFutures…
With all due respect to the second-tier, in politics the winners loom large while the losers look tinier (in the rearview mirror) than they really are. This proportional representation is a design choice, not a mistake.
With all due respect to the second-tier, in politics the winners loom large while the losers look tinier (in the rearview mirror) than they really are. This proportional representation is a design choice, not a mistake.