Last weekend I transferred my email to a new system in the cloud (did I really just say “in the cloud”??) and I came across an old email from my last “real” job. That was my only job ever where I worked in a cubicle, and it was awful for that and for so many other reasons.

Anyway, the email had a Top Ten list from David Letterman, from about September 2003. I hunted for the original list, and I found the list reposted many times, but not the original. And I decided I don’t like people who add a few more items to the list, because their items are never funny.

Without further ado, here’s…

Top Ten Drawbacks to Working in a Cubicle

10. Being told to “think outside the box” when you’re in a freakin’ box all day long.

9. Not being able to check e-mail attachments without turning around to see who’s behind you.

8. Cubicle walls do not offer much protection from any kind of gun fire.

7. That nagging feeling that if you press the right button, you’ll get a piece of cheese.

6. Lack of roof rafters for the noose.

5. The walls are too close together for the hammock to work right.

4. 23 power cords – 1 outlet.

3. Prison cells are not only bigger, they also have beds.

2. The carpet has been there since 1976 and shows more signs of life than your coworkers.

And… the number 1 drawback to working in a cubicle….

1.  You can’t slam the door on your way out when you quit.

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In a completely unwarranted statement, John snidely wondered how long until I criticized his chart.

Man. How did I deserve that… Oh, yeah.

Well, he asked for it.

Here’s what I did like about John’s chart:

• He used PNG format for the image file.
• The chart clearly shows most of the data.
• The use of lime graphics was not overboard, in fact, one lime per lime is an appropriate  scaling factor.

Here’s where John’s chart needs improvement:

• His ink to data ratio is way too high: look at that distracting shadow.
• His vertical axis title is tilted 90°, making it hard to read.
• The zero limes harvested in 2007 and 2008 are not clearly shown.
• Time series data is usually more effective on a line chart.

I’ve made the appropriate changes in the following chart.

I guess we should call this a Lime Chart.

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What could be causing the hige spike in traffic? Well, a look at the most popular blog posts of the day tells the story. Usually the three highest pages (by far) are Error Bars in Excel 2007 Charts, followed by Clustered-Stacked Column Charts and Installing an Add-In in Excel 2007. On Wednesday, the day I first noticed the spike, the top four posts were:

My top three are there, with their typical midweek numbers, but an unexpected post has climbed to the top, and climbed some more. My Periodic Table of What?? rant from a couple months ago had over 1600 views on Wednesday!

Thursday’s results were much the same, except that Periodic Table of What?? showed almost 2400 views. Here are page view stats for this page:

It looks like the surge in Periodic Table of What?? was also responsible for the high total on Tuesday.

I’m intrigued: What’s causing this sudden interest in my opinions about inappropriate data visualization metaphors?

No particular referring page stood out, and none had any more than the usual count.

The search phrases that send the most visitors to my blog are typically variations of add ins in excel 2007 and error bars in excel 2007. But now periodic table has joined the list.

I Googled periodic table, and I wasn’t in the first several pages. That wasn’t it.

I Googled periodic table of what, and naturally I ranked first. But who Googles for that?

Then I searched Google Images for periodic table of elements, and Periodic Table of What?? made it to the first row of the first page. Google’s crawlers must have noticed this post and ranked the image very high. I guess using the ALT parameter in your IMG tags really is important. And now all those middle school students who have to do a report about chemistry are treated to the marvels of PTS Blog.

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Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2010.
 
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
 

It’s a common recommendation not to use Excel at zooms other than 100% for a variety of reasons. Things don’t line up the same way at different zooms, and printing seems to best follow the view at 100%.

The behavior of Excel 2007 at different zooms has been greatly improved.

I’ll illustrate this phenomenon with a simple Excel 2003 column chart. This is the original chart, positioned and sized by holding the Alt key while dragging so that the chart borders align with the underlying cell borders.

Copy and paste the chart at a zoom of 100%, and the result is almost the same. Note that the width and height of the chart have increased by one pixel, the thickness of the cell borders. Somebody made an off-by-one error twenty years ago, and it persisted until Microsoft rebuilt the Excel 2007 charting engine from scratch.

Change the zoom to 75%, then copy and paste the chart again. This is more than the one-pixel error. It seems that the chart was copied, then reduced by 75% to fit the new zoom (the programmer forgot it was already at 75% when copied), and pasted. Or it was internally converted to 100%, copied, then reverted to 75% by two different programmers, then pasted. A closer analysis of the precise before and after sizes show an accumulation of one-pixel discrepancies that indicate the chart was probably always converted to 100% before copying. I’ll keep that analysis to myself. You’re welcome.

The first time I encountered this wacky behavior, I just about fell out of my chair.

The same happens at other zooms. If you copy and paste the chart at 150%, the result is 150% of the expected size. Here are how charts look that were pasted at 150%, 100%, and 75%:

Pretty strange.

As I mentioned, this behavior has been eliminated from Excel 2007. There are a few ways that don’t require upgrading to avoid the problem in earlier versions that exhibit this behavior.

If at any zoom, you copy the chart by holding CTRL while dragging, you get a perfect copy of the chart, exactly the same size, without even the one-pixel error. This is handy, especially since it is how I copy charts 90% of the time.

At any zoom, if you copy a range underneath a chart, and paste this range elsewhere, the chart that is copied with the range is reproduced faithfully at exactly its original size, without the one-pixel mismatch.

Finally, if you select the chart object (hold SHIFT or CTRL while selecting the chart) and then copy, the pasted chart is the same size as the original.

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Fancy Charts & Graphs, from The Big Picture by Barry Ritholtz

Thanks to Sjoerd Hoogwater for the link.

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It does illustrate the unnatural popularity of the genre, don’t you think?

Original at Dilbert comic strip for 03/07/2009 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive.

Thanks to Dermot, who emailed this to me moments before I saw it in my feed reader.

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So says Nick Cernis in Stick a Chart in it.

Among the charts he’s created for anyone in a hurry who just needs to pad a report is this Pork Pie Chart:

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But I get the idea that information aesthetics is taking this rather seriously as a useful way to display data. A 2D chart is ineffective enough for conveying informtion, and a pseudo 3D chart on a flat display (or a printed page) exaggerates the ineffectiveness. This sculpture can only be worse.

So information aesthetics is hosting a contest to find the best information display based on, but not printed on, paper. They chose this picture the headline the post announcing the contest.

My thoughts exactly. Or maybe…

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The only way I can think of to improve this chart is to explode the segments.

Oh yeah, and animate it. I’ve done just that in this zipped workbook.

GraphJam ought to be banned. After I came across the pie chart at the top of the page (I forget where I first saw it, but thanks somebody!), my daughter and I wasted spent an hour laughing at other graphs.

Before you think I’m completely against pie charts altogether, let me say that there are some pie charts, even in 3D and exploded varieties, which are acceptable and even welcome. This one came to me thanks to Nathan of Flowing Data. It is actually a commercial product by Mary and Matt.

I feel a Homer moment coming on.

Peltier Technical Services, Inc., Copyright © 2010.
 
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