Editing Chart Junk (section)

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===3D Bar Chart===
The Icon of the Microsoft&reg; Office Excel "Diagramm-Assistent" shows exactly what it mostly produces, namely ''Chart Junk''. This can be easily seen when we enlarge the picture and mark the points which do not carry information.

<center>
[[Image:Icon3.jpg|MS-Icon]]<br>
[The Microsoft Coorporation, 2002]
</center>

The following picture of a 3D Barplot in Excel shows which parts do not carry information and are thus just distracting the viewer away from the real point of interest. This is the height of the bars, which represents some numerical value.

<center>
[[Image:3Dbars02.jpg|250px|3D-bars]]<br>
[Seyfang, 2005]
</center>

There is no information in the use of the 3rd dimension which heavily influences the pictures and very much drives the attention towards the depth of the bars and the underlying grid. But this is not at all the information which schould be transported.

As a very important fact, the proportions of the areas represented by 3D bars are not in a relation to the actual data value represented. This is because the bar is more or less represented with the front part, the rectangle, and in addition to this with the two parts giving the impression of the 3rd dimension (which are chart junk per definition). The mistake in the proportion is called [[Teaching:TUW_-_UE_InfoVis_WS_2005/06_-_Gruppe_G4_-_Aufgabe_1_-_Lie_Factor|lie factor]].

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One may also want to consider the following error in the proportion of the actually visible areas of a 3D bar.

<center>
[[Image:Proportion.gif]]
</center>

The area providing the impression of the third dimension is chart junk per definition. Furthermore, the presented mistake in the proportion of the area and the represented value is considered to be the -->

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Editing Chart Junk (section)

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