1. One of the graphics I found appeared in the New York Times online. The graphic accompanied an article about companies reacting to rising commodity costs by raising prices on basic consumer goods, from lunchmeat to shoes. The graph was actually a set of three fairly simple fever charts depicting the rising costs of cotton, copper and corn since 2005. The data on the chart clearly show a spike in costs in 2011. The graphic’s other strengths include its simplicity, its legibility — as in, no extraneous figures or lines cluttering the view of the data — and its consistency between the 3 graphs charting different commodities. I thought that style tied the information in together and allowed readers to be able to immediately tell that the price of those goods had spiked, whether or not they read the article. That said, it’s still not the most exciting or eye-catching graphic, and it might have a hard time catching someone’s eye if they did not already have an interest in the topic.
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/02/14/business/0214-prices-gfx.html?ref=business
2. I really liked a chart in the Missourian called “Battle of the Sexes” because it was an entertaining, creative way to illustrate the relationships between the team members on the men and women’s teams and their coaches. The strengths include the creativity and interesting topic, as well as a visually appealing design using just half of each player’s face and a vertical alignment of that player’s response to each question. Weakness: I think it would have made more sense to place Coach Pingeton’s face on the far right side, since Coach Zimmerman’s was on the far left.
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/multimedia/graphic/2011/02/11/tiger-tipoff-battle-sexes/
3. This chart from shows the stock prices for CBOE Holdings Inc. for the past eight months. Strengths: it is immediately visible what the article wants you to see: that the stock prices plummeted last year, then evened out somewhat and now have risen 5.3 percent in the last month. Weaknesses: based on the headline, if you are unfamiliar with stock market jargon, you would be lost in the headline alone. Also, for one unfamiliar with stocks, it is unclear what the price range is for the closing figures until you read the article and see that it is in millions of dollars.
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=178228
4. This chart appeared in the Columbia Tribune. It’s a fairly basic chart showing the hierarchical structure of the Columbia Police Department. Its purpose was to illustrate the changes in the chain of command that are happening under the new system as it is being reconstructed. It was part of the article “Reorganizing the Law.” The weakness for this graphic are that it is unable to stand alone; it does not make sense to someone unless they also read the article.
http://www.columbiatribune.com/photos/2011/feb/13/24264/
5. This graphic appeared in a blog about the Hudson Bay ice coverage and how it has been affected in recent years by certain environmental factors, and whether these trends have been incorrectly attributed to El Nino and La Nina in the media. The weaknesses of the graph are that it’s not easy to pick up on what it is talking about if it were standing alone; even after reading the article, it was difficult for me to understand what was being shown, since it looked as though the end result was the same in all of the data trends. Upon second glance, however, I realized that what I was seeing is the amount of ice coverage being much less at the beginning of the winter months for each subsequent year.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20110202_Figure4.png
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