
Show HN: Tufte's discrete sparklines using D3.js - rooviz
http://dataviztalk.blogspot.com/2016/01/how-to-make-tuftes-discrete-sparklines.html
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jonahx
Curious what the advantage is (in general) of sparklines over, say, a line of
circles with filled in = win and empty = loss? you could use a red fill color
for streaks of 4 or more. It seems to me a solution like that would have less
clutter and better communicate the data...

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goldenchrome
A single line of circles allows for less information density. If you force it
to have the same information density then you lose a lot of legibility.
Secondly, it's possibly harder to see where outliers are. I find this
especially true when the vast majority of the dataset is 0, and you're looking
for the outlying 1s.

See this example I mocked up, where each line has the same number of data
points: [http://i.imgur.com/xRoY41c.png](http://i.imgur.com/xRoY41c.png)

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rooviz
Thanks, that example illustrates the information density point very well!

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kpil
What does the partial horizontal line indicate in Tufte's example?

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indyz
Looking at the Bosox 2009 schedule, it looks like the horizontal line
indicates home games.

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macintux
Indeed. 2nd paragraph on the linked page:

"This example is from Tufte's site, and was made in collaboration with Adam
Schwartz. The presence of a horizontal line represents a home game."

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danielhellier
Would have been better had you used SVG.

