Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Reaction: Effectively Communicating Numbers

The paper clearly states its objective as a means to describe the best practices to be used when representing numbers using some form a viz., like a table or a chart. It nearly summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of each and provides a basic study guide to a user who is in a dilemma of choosing between the several representations. Therefore I feel it is too much to expect more complex descriptions of the representations by considering various types of inputs from the paper. For a naive user the paper will be an effective guide but for an advanced user it would seem more like brushing up the basic concepts.

However, considering the fact that the paper was published in the year 2005, complex visualizations most certainly existed around that time frame. I find a strong relation between the content of the paper and the type of visualizations which can be created using the software pro-clarity. This maybe a reason why the author restricted himself to describing only those visualizations which can be created using pro-clarity.

I appreciate the methodology described by the author which talks about the steps which are to be followed in making a decision with respect to choosing a visualization. This certainly brings clarity into a users thought process and helps him make a better decision.

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