Talk:Chartjunk

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[edit] Notes on a sentence I added

"Although Tufte's book is widely regarded as a classic" ... published 1983, continuously in print, as of 2004 Amazon sales rank is 1621, Boston Globe called it "a visual Strunk and White," Whole Earth Catalog called it "THE visual style book," and the American Statistical Association said it was "The most important contribution so far to the study of the graph"--according to [1] but I see no reason to doubt either the accuracy of the quotes nor to suppose they are distorted by being taken out of context.

It's a classic. I first learned of it from the Whole Earth Catalog... before they were calling it THE visual style book, I believe. The American Statistical Association is a big enough gun to cite. And, no, I don't think it's necessary to verify the quotation. Wait for someone to seriously dispute it! Dpbsmith (talk) 14:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

"...as of 2004 the term is mainly associated with Tufte and has not achieved general currency." Only 904 Google hits on "chartjunk", not very many. Only 337 hits on "chartjunk -tufte" meaning that about 2/3 of them are in connection with Tufte. Not in AHD4. Not in common use to my own knowledge. And not surprising, as it's a rather awkward coinage (try to say it aloud—it's almost a tongue-twister). [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 00:20, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In December 2005 I'm getting 13,000 google hits for chartjunk, but still only 384 for chartjunk -tufte. I'd say that the prominence of the concept has become widespread, but it hasn't entered the general lexicon, as the vast majority of uses still contain a direct reference to the term's originator. To contrast - there are 23,800,000 hits for "cyberspace", with 22,500,000 for cyberspace -gibson (who popularised the term) and 23,600,000 for cyberspace -vinge (who coined it). Viveka 13:48, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with Tufte article

If chartjunk is indeed still associated with Tufte, ought we merge this article with the (surprisingly short) main Tufte article? Remes 20:05, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think there's enough more detail that could be provided about definitions and kinds of chartjunk, and arguments for and against it, that it deserves a separate article -- and some of the text here would seem out-of-place in Tufte's article. I agree that the Tufte article could use expansion, though; and moving some more detail on chartjunk there would be reasonable. -- Rbellin|Talk 20:11, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it matters a great deal. I thought, and IMHO Viveka has confirmed, that it is still not terribly common and still is associated with Tufte. A short summary of the some of the basic principles he articulated in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information would not be out of place there (data ink, etc.) and "Chartjunk" could be a subsection or something. But no need to be precipitous. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

This should not be merged with the Tufte article. He coined the word for an existing phenomenon -- it is not his word and it describes something that existed long before Tufte gave it a name.

[edit] Better example

The picture is really an awful example -- it's just an awful chart. Surely someone has a better PD example, maybe from the US Government. Many of the examples in Tufte's book are also PD, so we could just use one of those.