Friday, July 8, 2011

Ugly Charts


Usually I like to leave my work out of Oliver, but today, something so awful happened I had to share it.  I made the ugliest histogram I've ever seen.  I've taken out the words so you can't piece it together, but here is that ugly ugly chart:
There are 16 different colors on it.  They are associated with 31 different bars.  There are trend lines.  There are labels as well, but I have spared you those.  Trust me, they're awful.  The information intended to be represented here is lost amongst the explosion of color and sadness.  Those pastel colors in the middle were a necessary evil because the other colors available in Excel 03 are bright neon colors that make it look like a histogram on the surface of the sun. 
     The worst part is that this is part of a series.  There are at least 8 other graphs that look very similar to this.  It looks like I murdered clowns and spread them all over my computer.  Remember the good old days when we just made histograms out of construction paper and marker representing how many times we flipped heads and how many times we flipped tails?  I long for that histogram.  If my high school statistics teacher saw this, surely he would unwind his handlebar mustache, walk straight to DC, and slap me across the face.  This is an ugly chart; it is a miscarriage of statistical representation.

UPDATE:
Now, this is the ugliest histogram I've ever had to make:
 18 colors over 42 bars.  I had to use gray on the last three.  It's terrible.  Just fucking awful.

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