Visual Aid Critique

¶ … Visuals Visual 1: Problems pilots have encountered with a particular type of jet engine This pie chart is extremely confusing. There is a multi-colored section that does not even show traditional illustrative 'slices' but rather multi-colored blocks. This creates a 'busy' and hard-to-read visual. The relative sizes of the pie slices do not proportionately match up to the percentage of pilots experiencing various problems. The number of individuals having problems with the oil system (38%) is nearly half the size of the pie chart.

It is also not clear that there is overlap between the problems some pilots have but not others. For example, do the pilots with fuel control problems also have problems with fuel pumps, even though fewer pilots have fuel pump problems overall? In this instance, showing the number of persons having various kinds of problems visually with the use of a bar chart would render the findings in a clearer and more visually obvious manner.

Visual 2: Percentage of white acorn collected First and foremost, the purpose of the visual, which is to show the percentage of white oak acorns collected in each category, is rendered in a confusing, hard-to-read note on the left side of the visual, rather than a prominently, clearly-written title. This makes the subject of the visual very confusing. The bar chart is supposed to show the percentage of different kinds of acorns per year but is difficult to understand because the visual is so 'busy' and crowded.

Instead, there should be a bar chart for every year, with an individual, differently-colored bar for each type of acorn. Five separate bar charts for the different years would be much easier to read. Visual 3: Investment portfolio Once again, this is a poorly-labeled visual with a difficult-to-read title located on the side.