

Why Should Engineers and Scientists Be Worried About Color? - edw519
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/l/lloydt/color/color.HTM

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jsonscripter
A better title would talk about "Why Should Engineers and Scientists Be
Worried About Color _in Data Visualization_ "

I initially thought the article would talk about colours in the design sense,
and in which case engineers shouldn't worry whatsoever. It's not their job.

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amichail
Making a big deal out of color in the design sense in tech is probably a great
way to discourage men from buying your product:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcBpXYI1r3Q>

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hughprime
Not necessarily, though using feminine colours probably is. I've never seen a
man get annoyed by the large number of available of colours when buying a car,
or even a shirt.

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sp332
I've only read partway into this article, but I really don't understand what
he's saying in the section "Misleading Use of Color in Your Data". I literally
didn't have a single one of the problems he listed with the colored
representations. I don't see color banding, and I don't have trouble
distinguishing various shades of green-to-cyan. Also, I think the third
grayscale image in Figure 2 is really misleading, since it's showing a 2D
cross-section as if it were 3D.

Used properly, the colorscale (is that a word?) should give 3x the amount of
data as grayscale, which I think is clearly shown in the fourth image.

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pixcavator
>the colorscale... should give 3x the amount of data as grayscale

The visualization can't contain more data than the data itself!

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sp332
Well, of course :) I mean the _potential_ max amount of data can be increased
with color, since now you have three axes (RBG instead of L). Although now
that you mention it, he was only using "hue", and holding luminance steady, so
I guess in this case it's the same - just rotating around the very outside
edge of the color wheel without going inside. I still think it has more visual
contrast, though.

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jbronn
For those wondering, I believe the visualizations on this page were created
with OpenDX (<http://opendx.org/>) or its predecessor from IBM.

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sp332
You can register by email to get a copy, but the link they sent me is dead
(looks like the website doesn't exist anymore). Someone put up a copy at
[http://pagesperso-
orange.fr/pierre.baldensperger/OpenDX-4.4....](http://pagesperso-
orange.fr/pierre.baldensperger/OpenDX-4.4.4-Setup.exe)

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pixcavator
I think "the rule" should be very simple: if your data has just one parameter,
don’t use colors! The gray scale will give you the only faithful
representation of the data.

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TallGuyShort
One definite advantage to colors, however, is expressing certain thresholds
(as in the coast-line example). The only way to express multiple thresholds in
gray-scale is to distort the scale, and then you no longer have a faithful
representation either.

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pixcavator
If you are doing this visualization for yourself, you can experiment with
colors and thresholds to bring out the features that are important (in your
view). And that’s OK because you still have all the data at hand. If however
this visualization is for someone else, such as the MRI given to a doctor,
anything but a faithful representation would be very dangerous. Basically, you
would substitute your judgment for that of a specialist.

