Numbers people vs. graphics people
When people talk about visualization, they tend to refer to two separate sub-divisions of the human species: numbers people and graphics people. As the name suggests, the first type understands and loves numbers – especially in the form of tables. Although graphics people don’t, they understand the context just as quickly when it is visualized in bar charts.
People who believe in this type of visualization Darwinism like to substantiate their arguments with comments such as: “Just imagine…you are supposed to be able to derive the profit growth from this table. Only a numbers person can do that!”
Source Hugo Boss AG
Then they will show a chart similar to the one below and say, “Now look how a chart explains that same message. You can see the profit growth immediately.”
Visualization of the table above (only net income data)
Yet, those who don’t feel that they can be categorized as pure numbers or graphics people might object to this “proof” with the following, somewhat philosophical arguments:
- In general, a chart encrypts. And what does it encrypt? The numbers! To understand the encryption, you first need to decode it – and then you end up with numbers again. After all, if a person doesn’t know what 50 percent means, then he or she won’t be able to understand the value of a half of a pie either.
- Even people who love numbers will use charts wherever they clarify the message and avoid them whenever they do not. It sounds very hypothetical to say that a chart and a table are equally suitable and that the reader will ultimately decide what is more understandable.
- As I showed many times with examples of graphic tables, the combination of graphical elements and numbers is better than either a pure table or graphic because it answers many questions before you can even ask them.
If you take a very close look at the example above, you will also see that both visualizations are not comparable. In the table, we see that the initial values were translated into increases in the chart. These increases, however, represent changes. In other words, we see the values over several years in the table and in the chart we see the changes among these values.
And what, pray tell, would all species have the easiest time understanding? How about a simple sentence:
An information-dense statement
I don’t with your comparison of the table and related chart. I admit that I’m a graphics person, but I’m pretty good with numbers too. I don’t think my orientation affects my performance as described below.
I look at the table and I see numbers, lots of them, and I have co contentrate to make sense of them. I have to concentrate to see any kind of trend, and it’s not until I’ve pored over the table for a while that I realize that the date increases from right to left. Then I have to compare the numbers. If I only look, to me, the difference between the numbers 117.6 and 74.7 don’t appear too different. It’s only when I stop thinking and stop analyzing, and do the arithmetic, that I realize it’s a 35 % drop. Then I look at the next pair, and by the time I subtract one from the other, I’ve forgotten what I calculated a moment ago.
I look at the chart, and I see an initial value, then the next value is a lot lower, looks like 1/3 lower than the first. From then on, the bars become larger, increasingly so, and for the last couple of years their amounts have been larger than the initial value. This is in a single glance, without having to stop and prepare the numbers (i.e., mental mathematics) before I can analyze them.
So much of the human brain’s processing power is devoted to visual analysis. This is what helps us to assess our surroundings and recognize patterns so quickly. All of this processing power is not available to us when we have to crunch the numbers first. The graphs give us our strong first impressions. If we need to focus in on something, well, we’ve already figured out the scope and context of the numbers, so we can now start to put exact digital values on the visual impressions we’ve formed.
Friday, November 21st, 2008, 8:12 pmI didn’t mean to hijack your blog like that, sorry.
And with all of that, I forgot to relate this to your graphical tables post. What makes your graphical table so powerful is that the sparklines give our visual hunter’s brain the major impressions, the numbers provide precise scales, and the integrated structure of the table places the two information media in intimate contact.
Friday, November 21st, 2008, 8:15 pm