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I’ve linked to a couple things Evan has done before, but this is probably my favorite to date. It’s titled Data visualization is, itself, data so you can probably figure out what it covers. My favorite piece of the post is the graphic of web traffic to WordPress using a computer and using an iPad.

WP traffic

WP traffic with iPad

The inverse of these two pictures by days of week and hour of the day is awesome and incredibly pronounced. Evan talks about it a little more in his post, but anyone can get the gist of what’s going on here just by the graphics.

In the age of infographics, lots of people have been moving towards displaying pretty data versus displaying helpful data. Do the colors look cool? Can you use some funky icons on a bar graph? Are all the fonts absolutely perfect? Not that these things aren’t important, but too many infographics nowadays don’t actually TELL you anything.

I’m a big fan of Edward Tufte and his writings on how to best display data. This was the book that a former boss gave me to introduce Tufte’s concepts to me and I’ve been hooked ever since.

So be more like Evan and make nice graphics that actually tell you something. Don’t just try to make a good looking infographic.