Chartjunk

Simple bar charts are often 'artistically' embellished to make them more visually appealing. This is called chartjunk and usually makes the information in the data harder to read. Chartjunk should be avoided.

Hawaii visitor arrivals in 2012

Replacing bars with objects

A more serious problem arises when the rectangular bars in a barchart are replaced with pictures of objects. Are the frequencies proportional to:

The diagrams are usually drawn with height proportional to frequency, but at a quick glance, most readers would use something between area and volume, giving a misleading impression of the importance of the larger objects.

Merit raises