I want to determine the total count of the most popular baby names in New Zealand from 2001 to 2010, and I chose a bar chart to represent this data.
I think that a bar chart is the best way to visually represent the total counts of these names from 2001 to 2010, because it makes it easier to see both the names and their respective counts.
I remembered Lin’s advice about simplifying and clarifying visualizations, and I completely agree with that. First, I changed the default sorting of the X-axis from “Name” to “Total Value (Descending)” so that the most popular name is displayed first, and the least popular name is displayed last. Then, I also increased the chart width from 960px to 2000px to prevent the names from overlapping and appearing mushed together. I think that these adjustments should make the chart more straightforward and easier to interpret.
4 thoughts on “Lab Assignment 3”
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Good job on your bar graph! It clearly displays the information of top baby names from 2000-2010. I will say, I think changing the colors between the bars would make it a bit clearer to the viewer as it would prevent the information from becoming muddled. Other than that, however, it is pretty good!
Hey Jeremy, you stole my idea! Just kidding, haha. I actually had the same idea as you at first, but luckily I checked the posts before actually making it. Otherwise, we might’ve ended up being accused of plagiarism lol. Anyway, back to your graph—considering what people are most likely interested in (e.g. people usually care more about what the most popular male names and female names are separately rather than mixing them together), I think it’d be better to split the graph into two. One for the total count of male names and another for female names. That way, it’d represent the data in a more informative way. Despite so, it’s still a really good and straightforward graph!
I also concluded that using the bar chart was the best way to present the data on baby names. I didn’t incorporate the time on my bar chart because I couldn’t find a way to differentiate the names between the years instead of just grouping them together like you did. I believe your graph encapsulates the names of babies from the 2000s, so it was a good decision to group them together. Great work!
I really enjoyed the simplicity of your decision, I think it is a great way to visualize the number of times each name was used over that decade. I had a similar idea of using bar charts to display the information, except I chose to make a chart for each name with years on the x-axis to see change over time for each name. I think both of our ideas provide slightly different information depending on if people want to see total usage of names or change over time. I definitely agree with your thoughts on why bar charts are one of the best ways to display the information from the dataset.