TABLE GRAPHICS

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TABLE ? GRAPHICS

• Nivedita Sumi Majumdar
• CSI 773 Redesign Project

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An Improved Idea to Represent Small-sized Table
Data

• Data Table is one of the best known, most used
  data representation method, particularly
  preferred, to economize on space as well as
  dedicated graphics design effort.
• However, a bunch of numbers does not make much of
  an impression to the reader until he really gets
  into the material.
• Today A poor table layout ? A semi-tabular
  graphical layout
• Part of the objective in preserving the tabular
  structure of the data representation is so that
  this design can be easily adapted for other
  moderately sized tables without too much
  customizing.

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Example
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Source

• A table taken from the Budget of the United
  States Government Economic Report of the
  President, 2004 (Statistical Tables). File
  B-110. Foreign exchange rates, 1983-2003 (26 KB).
  
• Available from http//www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/
  fy05/erp.html

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Table Description

• Shows the foreign exchange rates with respect to
  the US Dollar over two decades, 1983 2003.
• Columns correspond to the currencies of 10
  different countries and since 1998, the Economic
  and Monetary Union country members as one group.
• Rows correspond to each years data.
• Where the dollar is stronger, it represents the
  data in currency units per dollar values and
  where another currency is stronger it has US
  Dollar per currency unit values.

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Scope Changes Summarized

• Data here has 4 digits of accuracy. Cannot
  perceive by visual inspection
• A multi-panel horizontal bar chart was
  designed,
• with the bar lengths representing the
  data values in the table.
• Data along each column was normalized between 0
  and 1
• to make the comparison over the
  years (on y-axis) easy
• The actual data labels on the bar chart
• were un-normalized data, rounded to
  2 figures after the decimal
• Inconsistent number of members in row groups
• Groups of 4 are put on alternating panel colors
• according to good perceptual
  grouping practice.
• Color scheme is chosen with advice from Color
  Brewer.
• 1 and 2 Superscripts legends are obscure
• Columns are rearranged by subscript information
• relevant details added as labels to the layout
  axis.
• Group Separation shown by space between columns.
  
• Group Separation shown with color coding.

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Scope Changes Summarized Cont..

• Some data seemed as unnecessary to the purpose
  of the table.
• Remove those data
• 1st column is assigned much more width than is
  necessary
• Corrected by assigning year as the y-axis
  labels.
• Column headings emphasized the country names
  rather than the currency names.
• Reversed the emphasis in keeping with context
• Source mentioned in an obscure manner.
• This information is prominently included as a
  label.

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Thank you for your attention