GraphJam Side A · Music & pop culture in charts
The Plate Archive18 charts

Charts About Charts: The Self-Referential Collection

The collection that reviews the format it is drawn in, and the one data-visualisation researchers actually cite.

Eighteen charts about charts. It is a small collection that matters more than its size, because it is the one that crossed out of humour and into the literature: two of its entries are cited in writing about data visualisation, by people who were not looking for jokes.

The chart that is its own subject

Pie I have eaten is linked from eleven sites, and is published as its own plate. A photograph of a lemon pie in a foil tin, one slice gone, with a two-item legend attached. It is the only pie chart in the archive that satisfies every condition a textbook sets for using one: two mutually exclusive categories that exhaust a single whole, with areas that are true because the missing wedge is the pie that was eaten.

It was filed at eagereyes in a piece on charts and metaphors, posted to MetaFilter, picked up by a public-sector data discussion, and translated approvingly in Spanish and German. Charts that depend on wordplay die at the language border; this one has four words in it and an object that means the same thing everywhere.

The format, criticised in its own language

Perception of 3D pie charts is the collection’s other real argument. A tilted pie distorts area systematically, the near slices read larger, and that is the standard objection to the most common decorative choice in business graphics. Drawing the objection as a chart is more persuasive than stating it.

Survey of Pie-chart shapes is a taxonomy of a single format. Distribution Of Bar Chart Column Heights asks what a bar chart looks like when the bars are the data. Practical Use of the Colon is linked from two sites, and is about punctuation rather than charts, but belongs here by temperament. Pi chart holds three, for a homophone.

Charts about GraphJam itself

Four entries turn the instrument on the platform. Color Blind Friendliness of Graphs made on GraphJams is a genuine accessibility complaint about the site’s own chart builder, published by the site. Number of readers plots its own audience. Advertisements on the Cheeseburger Sites charts the network the site belonged to. Graphjam ladies plots its own demographics.

That the submission queue accepted all four says something about how the place was run. Been There, Done That, Made A Graph About It, the last entry in the collection from October 2010, is the same reflex applied to the whole enterprise three weeks before it stopped.

The honest ones

Why I made this Graph is the most self-aware title in the archive: the reasons for drawing a chart, charted. Its image is not among those recovered, so what the categories were is not recorded here. Lies damn lies invokes the statistical proverb without completing it. Numbers that grab your attention is about the presentation of figures rather than the figures. Percentage of graph ownership when submitted through Google Chrome is a joke about the site’s own submission form.

A Brief Lesson in Flow Charts and Problem Solving Flowchart, the latter published as a plate linked from three sites, close the loop: instructional diagrams about instructional diagrams, which is where a self-referential collection was always going to end up.

Every complaint in this collection is a complaint about a chart that flatters its author. The test is whether the drawing survives being checked against the number it claims, which is exactly what a published payout rate has to survive: one percentage standing in for a whole year of mixed behaviour.

Charts here
18
Images recovered
6
Published as plates
3
Referring domains
37
First posted
Apr 2008
Last posted
Oct 2010

The charts

In publication order. Sides run in tens, the way a record does. A chart marked as a plate has its own page and its own retrospective; the rest are published here, at the addresses they held when they were posted.

  1. A1

    Problem Solving Flowchart

    · Drawn by malachi lohman · 3 domains still link here · published as a plate

  2. A2

    Distribution Of Bar Chart Column Heights

    · Drawn by Lethal Larry · image not recovered

  3. A3

    Survey of Pie-chart shapes

    · Drawn by Bloobeard

  4. A4

    Percentage of graph ownership when submitted through Google Chrome

    · Drawn by Michael D · image not recovered

  5. A5

    Pie I have eaten

    · Drawn by Jamie Schimley · 11 domains still link here · published as a plate

  6. A6

    Perception of 3D pie charts

    · Drawn by Federico · 3 domains still link here · published as a plate

  7. A7

    Color Blind Friendliness of Graphs made on GraphJams

    · Drawn by colburbe · image not recovered

  8. A8

    Pie Chart

    · Drawn by Athena

  9. A9

    Number of readers

    · Drawn by JohenNescau · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  10. A10

    Advertisements on the Cheeseburger Sites

    · Drawn by frankensteiner

  11. Side B
  12. B1

    A Brief Lesson in Flow Charts

    · Drawn by NefAmph · image not recovered

  13. B2

    Numbers that grab your attention

    · Drawn by Little-J-97 · image not recovered

  14. B3

    Why I made this Graph

    · Drawn by WerewolF4797 · image not recovered

  15. B4

    Graphjam ladies

    · image not recovered

  16. B5

    Practical Use of the Colon

    · Drawn by Exayevie · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

  17. B6

    Lies damn lies

    · image not recovered

  18. B7

    Pi chart

    · 3 domains still link here · image not recovered

  19. B8

    Been There, Done That, Made A Graph About It

    · 2 domains still link here · image not recovered

Queries answered

Why does this collection get cited by data visualisation writers?

Because two of its charts make real arguments about the format. Pie I have eaten, linked from eleven sites, is a pie chart whose units are pie; Perception of 3D pie charts plots the specific distortion a tilted pie introduces. Both were filed by writers on visualisation, not by humour sites.

What is the pie chart made of pie?

A photograph of a lemon pie with one slice removed, captioned with a two-item legend: pie eaten and pie not yet eaten. It is the third most-linked chart in the archive, behind the political one and the dating-pool one, and it is the only chart here that satisfies every textbook condition for using a pie.

Is there a chart about 3D pie charts?

One, from November 2008, published as its own plate. Two addresses point at it, one with a trailing slash and one without, both now resolving to the same entry, which is why it can look like two. It plots the reading error a tilted pie introduces, which is the standard objection to the format, drawn using the format.

Are these charts critical of the site itself?

Several are. Color Blind Friendliness of Graphs made on GraphJams, Number of readers, Graphjam ladies and Advertisements on the Cheeseburger Sites are all about the platform they were published on, and the site published them anyway.

Why do some entries have no image?

All original images were hosted on a service that no longer serves them. Where no copy survived, the entry keeps its title, date and address.