Comments on: Global warming and you http://lancewiggs.com/2009/04/29/global-warming-and-you/ NZ Internet, Media and Business Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:02:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Lance Wiggs http://lancewiggs.com/2009/04/29/global-warming-and-you/#comment-12360 Wed, 29 Apr 2009 05:03:03 +0000 http://lancewiggs.com/?p=1590#comment-12360 I agree, it isn’t to scale and therefore a bit misleading. However it does focus the mind on the one point – that lots of people think global warming will affect others, and that few think it will affect them. The only number I took away was 32%, which was one number more than the blue chart.

]]> By: Ben http://lancewiggs.com/2009/04/29/global-warming-and-you/#comment-12359 Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:37:40 +0000 http://lancewiggs.com/?p=1590#comment-12359 Couldn’t agree more that charts should be simple and convey one or two key points… but the triangle chart you use as an exemplar is visually misleading. People use area as a heuristic to judge relative difference, and in the triangle chart it looks as though the % of people who think climate change will harm them is about 1/15th of the % who think it will harm plant and animal species.

You could say ‘well, they should look at the labels on the left hand side’, but given a general aversion to numbers and the visual cues of the graphic (i.e., start at the middle top and work your way down the centre line), the visual impression is likely to be the one people take away.

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