What I’m about to write about should be considered by confession of geekness. I’m perfectly fine with that. The sad part is my wife now knows
just how big of a geek I am too.
In the “real world” it’s often easy to find examples of poor data visualization design. It’s a bit more rare to find a really good example.
Sitting on the couch one weekend, watching TV with my wife, I saw a Prudential Retirement commercial. (yes a commercial, they still exist in the DVR / NetFlix era). Essentially, people are asked to place a sticker on a chart to mark the age of the oldest person they’ve ever known. By the end of the commercial you are made to believe that people are living longer so you should invest more in your retirement.
Here’s a link to the 1-min commercial: http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7IhP/prudential-age-stickers
In the “real world” it’s often easy to find examples of poor data visualization design. It’s a bit more rare to find a really good example.
Sitting on the couch one weekend, watching TV with my wife, I saw a Prudential Retirement commercial. (yes a commercial, they still exist in the DVR / NetFlix era). Essentially, people are asked to place a sticker on a chart to mark the age of the oldest person they’ve ever known. By the end of the commercial you are made to believe that people are living longer so you should invest more in your retirement.
Here’s a link to the 1-min commercial: http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7IhP/prudential-age-stickers
I literally got up and shouted “I LOVE IT” and my wife looked at me like I had
6 heads. Oddly, I was going to write about how good of an example it was until
I sat down to write. When I did, I started to break down the visual and the
story it was telling and realized how biased it actually is.
What if the study had asked the same people if they knew someone that has passed away between the ages of 50 and 65 and plotted those stickers? Would you still want to increase your retirement investment if it were likely you wouldn’t reach retirement age?
The fact is, you can make a chart tell just about any story you want by using partial data. In order to represent the data accurately, you should include all the data.
In this case, a more responsible way to visualize this data might have been to show average (or median) age of death(based on all death data) over time. If the line is trending up, you have your unbiased visual to market. If it’s trending down, don’t twist the data to tell otherwise. Although this is marketing and honesty doesn't necessarily sell investment packages.
Cheers,
Kevin Taylor
What if the study had asked the same people if they knew someone that has passed away between the ages of 50 and 65 and plotted those stickers? Would you still want to increase your retirement investment if it were likely you wouldn’t reach retirement age?
The fact is, you can make a chart tell just about any story you want by using partial data. In order to represent the data accurately, you should include all the data.
In this case, a more responsible way to visualize this data might have been to show average (or median) age of death(based on all death data) over time. If the line is trending up, you have your unbiased visual to market. If it’s trending down, don’t twist the data to tell otherwise. Although this is marketing and honesty doesn't necessarily sell investment packages.
Cheers,
Kevin Taylor
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