Monday, January 22, 2018

Data Visualization Analysis

Statistics Canada released this visualization December 2017 showing Employed labour force who worked full year, full time and reported employment income in 2015.  The visualization is concisely designed, comprehensible, and visually appealing, but it does not provide the information in the clearest way possible. The pie chart was a poor choice to display the collected data because there are too many individual slices of the chart. In addition, the visualization relies on its core center to provide information instead of focusing on its interactive portion. The slices of the pie chart would be meaningless without the core center.  Moreover, the occupation titles appear on some of the categories but they are cut off and not fully legible. The incomplete titles cannot be fully seen unless they are clicked on.



The visualization can be filtered by using the drop-down menu to select National Occupational Classification (NOC), Highest certificate, diploma or degree, or, by Geographical location to provide more specific information. 





The list that the drop-down menu provides for the NOC is extremely long and tedious to scroll through.



The visualization could have been simplified if there was less data represented. The pie chart that shows the total occupations is an overwhelming image and does not make sense if the numbers were removed. Once a more specific category is selected the visualization is improved and simplified because there is less to look at. However, even the simplified chart is poorly constructed because the rings would not make sense without the core center providing numbers.






The visualization has too much information for it to work in this format. Some of the slices in the pie chart are so small that it is easy to pass over them. For example, the Architectural technologists and technicians category is barely visible. This visualization would work better as a series of bar charts broken down by field of occupation. If the charts were displayed as bar charts the information would be clearer to interpret with or without showing numbers.








The interactive portion of the visualization was its strongest element. It was easy to maneuver and simple to understand. The visualization was accessible to interact with either by using the drop-down menu to refine the search or by scrolling over the different slices and clicking on one to learn more information. The biggest critique is that the amount of information the visualization is attempting to provide is does not display well in pie chart format.


Source: Employed labour force who worked full year, full time and reported employment income in 2015, 2016 Census (Table). http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2016/dp-pd/dv-vd/occ-pro/index-eng.cfm

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5 comments:

  1. MarcusBJanuary 22, 2018 at 8:14 PM

    This critique makes a lot of strong point about the ineffectiveness of the pie chart format and I especially like when you go specifically and talk about architectural technicians and show just how small and easily ignored that portion is. I agree that the graph uses it's interactive aspects as a crutch to display the data when it should rely on the data to speak for itself.

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  2. UnknownJanuary 25, 2018 at 4:41 PM

    While I love a chart that compares more than one set of data, I think that this is trying to do too much. I agree that the interactive element improves my comprehension of the data, but I still think it's too much piled into one.

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  3. SartaajJanuary 27, 2018 at 8:34 PM

    Using a pie chart was a poor choice for the chart due to the reasons you listed. The charts have to rely on the centre far too much and has too much data which makes it pretty confusing.

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  4. UnknownJanuary 28, 2018 at 6:12 PM

    I agree the visualization is very poorly designed. The main reason being that there is just way too much information. I liked the suggestions you gave about going back and trying to simplify the data all together.

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  5. UnknownJanuary 28, 2018 at 10:43 PM

    You did a great job of breaking it all down, and without having it explained piece by piece, it probably would have been a nightmare to decode. This graph relies heavily on its colourful appearance and not so much on how easy it is to take information from it.

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