2864: Compact Graphs - Revision history

Natg19: /* Transcript */ add cat

2025-07-10T16:54:24Z

‎Transcript: add cat

Xurkitree10: /* Transcript */

2024-10-10T19:22:56Z

‎Transcript

172.69.43.223: Undo revision 337722 by Laser813 (talk) We really need the category to exist, first.

2024-03-19T19:12:14Z

Undo revision 337722 by Laser813 (talk) We really need the category to exist, first.

Laser813 at 18:21, 19 March 2024

2024-03-19T18:21:00Z

1234231587678 at 18:52, 5 March 2024

2024-03-05T18:52:16Z

Laser813 at 15:06, 17 February 2024

2024-02-17T15:06:20Z

Kynde: /* Explanation */

2024-01-18T12:24:22Z

‎Explanation

Kynde: /* Explanation */

2024-01-18T12:19:22Z

‎Explanation

172.69.194.225 at 10:17, 19 December 2023

2023-12-19T10:17:35Z

Orion205 at 06:16, 11 December 2023

2023-12-11T06:16:32Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 16:54, 10 July 2025
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	[[Category:Charts]]		[[Category:Charts]]
	[[Category:Tips]]		[[Category:Tips]]
		+	[[Category:Graphic designers]]

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 ==Transcript==
 :[Left: graph of points plotted along two axes, headered by:]
 :Variable 1: X Axis

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 [[Category:Comics with color]]
 [[Category:Charts]]
 [[Category:Tips]]

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 [[Category:Comics with color]]
 [[Category:Charts]]
 [[Category:Tips]]

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 A color scale graph was previously the source of a joke in [[2537: Painbow Award]].
-Trivia: Hue is commonly used to represent a proportional dimension in geospatial analytics, such as relative rainfall on meteorological maps or relative height on topographical maps ({{w|hypsometric tints}}), usually with a key. This is quite different than using hue to directly represent a numerical value from 0 to 360.
+Additionally, hue is commonly used to represent a proportional dimension in geospatial analytics, such as relative rainfall on meteorological maps or relative height on topographical maps ({{w|hypsometric tints}}), usually with a key. This is quite different than using hue to directly represent a numerical value from 0 to 360.
 [[file:WeatherBow.png|thumb|center|550px|alt=TV weather forecast color scale]]

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 ==Explanation==
-This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Tips|Tips]], this time a design tip, the second of two in a row, the first being [[2863: Space Typography]] with a space tip.
+This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Tips|Tips]], this time a design tip, the second of two in a row, the first being [[2863: Space Typography]] with a space tip. The comic is unusual because Randall makes an apparent error (see below).
-In it, he tells graphic designers they can be more space-efficient by using ''hue'' (an element of color) and the data point's ''label'' in their graphs to represent the first two quantitative dimensions of a dataset rather than what's traditional: using x and y axes and then using hue and label to represent additional dimensions (such as hue for the z-axis, or the label for qualitative info).
+Randall tells graphic designers they can be more space-efficient by using ''hue'' (an element of color) and the data point's ''label'' in their graphs to represent the first two quantitative dimensions of a dataset rather than what's traditional: using x and y axes and then using hue and label to represent additional dimensions (such as hue for the z-axis, or the label for qualitative info).
 In this comic's hue-label graph, the x-axis dimension is (mostly) translated into corresponding hue values, and the y-axis dimension is translated into text labels; that is, the mass of colorful lines in the comic is actually [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/4/4a/compact_graphs_2x.png several numbers written in the same spot]. Each number is one of the y-coordinates of a point in the left graph, and its color (usually) corresponds to its x-coordinate using the Hue, Saturation, Value (HSV) model. In other words, the labels' colors are not arbitrary; each color represents a numerical dimension of the data point as a Hue value from 0 to some maximum. Typically this is up to 360° in the wraparound continuum of the HSV or HSL color models, where Red is zero/360, but other numeric relations and subsets can be chosen to avoid unnecessarily confusing the lowest-value hues from the highest (of a non-cyclic scale) and/or to align more meaningful colours (e.g. blue for cool and red for hot, avoiding the magenta segment as much as practical from either direction).
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 Randall's intent may have been to both (1) keep the x-axis values of his illustration between 0 and 100 (perhaps they represent real-world percentages) while (2) having a range of colors across the rainbow for the Hue-Label graph. But if a full color range was his motivation for the mixup, it's not clear why he didn't simply make the dataset's x-values range from 0 to 360 to cover the full range of potential hue values. Either way, the inconsistency satirically reinforces how limited this type of  graph style actually is; a "hue-label" graph is so unhelpful that even the author (perhaps) didn't notice he was graphing his values incorrectly.
-An hypothetical example of a potential topic for these 5 datapoints is '''Exercise Duration vs. Calorie Burn'''. In this scenario, on the x-axis, the duration of exercise in minutes (0 to 100) would be plotted, and the y-axis would show the calories burned (0 to 250). The longer the exercise duration, the more calories are burned, but the graph shows it's not a perfect correlation. Many other scenarios are possible. The true scenario may be related to whatever ''What If?'' video script Randall is currently writing; at the time of this comic, he had just published his first two What If? videos to YouTube and said he was working on more of them.
+An hypothetical example of a potential topic for these 5 datapoints is '''Exercise Duration vs. Calorie Burn'''. In this scenario, on the x-axis, the duration of exercise in minutes (0 to 100) would be plotted, and the y-axis would show the calories burned (0 to 250). The longer the exercise duration, the more calories are burned, but the graph shows it's not a perfect correlation. Many other scenarios are possible.
 The title text mentions that people may complain about readability, as is evident from the jumbled mess of seemingly meaningless lines in the hue and label graph in the comic. It says that discerning the data points is "computationally feasible, as long as there aren't too many of them". The decryption of information being labelled as "computationally feasible" implies that it is so difficult to discern, that the best thing that can be said about it is that it is not completely impossible.

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:17, 19 December 2023
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	==Explanation==		==Explanation==
−	~~{{incomplete\|Created by HUGH LABEL, PROTECTOR OF THE COLOR REALM - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}~~
	This comic is another one of [[:Category:Tips\|Randall's Tips]]. In it, he tells graphic designers they can be more space-efficient by using ''hue'' (an element of color) and the data point's ''label'' in their graphs to represent the first two quantitative dimensions of a dataset rather than what's traditional: using x and y axes and then using hue and label to represent additional dimensions (such as hue for the z-axis, or the label for qualitative info).		This comic is another one of [[:Category:Tips\|Randall's Tips]]. In it, he tells graphic designers they can be more space-efficient by using ''hue'' (an element of color) and the data point's ''label'' in their graphs to represent the first two quantitative dimensions of a dataset rather than what's traditional: using x and y axes and then using hue and label to represent additional dimensions (such as hue for the z-axis, or the label for qualitative info).

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 This Hue-Label graph contains the five data points as an orangish-red '''<span style="color:#ff3a00">62</span>''', a yellow '''<span style="color:#ffdb0f">159</span>''', a green '''<span style="color:#8afc03">205</span>''', a turquoise '''<span style="color:#08a387">187</span>''' and a blue '''<span style="color:#0060ff">230</span>'''.
-# The red '''<span style="color:#ff3a00">62</span>''' corresponds to an x-value of approx. 157, a hue value corresponding to a shade of warm red.
+# The red '''<span style="color:#ff3a00">62</span>''' corresponds to an x-value of approx. 17, a hue value corresponding to a shade of warm red.
 # The yellow '''<span style="color:#ffdb0f">159</span>''' corresponds to an x-value of approx. 36, in the range that typically represents warm yellow.
 # The green '''<span style="color:#8afc03">205</span>''' corresponds to an x-value of approx. 67, a hue value for yellowish green.