I decided to work with RAWGraphs because it was very beginner-friendly and I found it very easy to explore different types of graphs / variables. However, I found some problems with the customization options in terms of color and axis that I couldn’t figure out. For example, I attempted to alter the ‘Year’ x-axis to exclude the automated comma the website adds, but I ended up having to leave it.
When initially looking at the data, I thought the ‘count’ variable was interesting, so I decided to display it in relation to time, which ended up being easiest shown on a line graph. This is because line graphs show the ebbs and flows of the count over the years. Then, I deided to add the ‘rank’ variable by creating a new line for each rank from 1-10. This created an interesting graph with lots of lines that could now display how close together some of the rankings were in terms of count. This gave me more context beyond the simplified 1-10 ranking system, because the gaps in between each line indicates how many more votes each name had.
Origianlly, the website was automized to give labels to each line, but I decided that since the rankings will always be from 1 (highest line) to 10 (lowest line), it was more clear to delete them and let the lines speak for themselves. I also decided to chose the blue color over the original black, since I felt that the black blended into the axis lines too much. Finally, I decided to make additional graphs that breakdown the data further between M and F, which gave me further information and showed that the M data actually had a bigger count number than the women.
After making these graphs and reflecting on Lin’s lecture, it made me think a lot about the instantaneous way our brains can understand data from a graph compared to words. When making my graph, I realized that a lot of detail and information can be placed into the simple arrangement of lines, which can be very powerful in the digital humanities. Going forward, I imagine that learning about data visualization and graphing could be a great tool for me to learn how to present data quickly and efficiently. As someone who can struggle to explain complex pieces of data, these visualizations are a great thing to think about when I encounter data struggles in the future!
