Junk Charts
This chart is just crying out for a Junk Charts treatment:
Let’s start with the use of three-dimensional volumes to represent a two-dimensional variable (square footage). This is one of the classic errors Tufte cites. Second, note the non-uniform time scale.: twenty year time steps and then a fourteen year interval (1990-2004). Third, what is the distribution of house sizes? Medians are generally more useful indicators of central tendency when you have a skewed distribution (and I’d expect that home sizes are skewed).
Okay. My crotchety quantitative visualization critic has been placated.
