Related papers: Towards a Theory of Bullshit Visualization
Data visualization is powerful in persuading an audience. However, when it is done poorly or maliciously, a visualization may become misleading or even deceiving. Visualizations give further strength to the dissemination of misinformation…
In this essay, I argue that, while visualization research does not seem to be directly at risk of being corrupted by the current massive wave of polluted research, certain visualization concepts are being used in fraudulent fashions and…
"Theory figures" are a staple of theoretical visualization research. Common shapes such as Cartesian planes and flowcharts can be used not only to explain conceptual contributions, but to think through and refine the contribution itself.…
Understanding and evaluating uncertainty play a key role in decision-making. When a viewer studies a visualization that demands inference, it is necessary that uncertainty is portrayed in it. This paper showcases the importance of…
In this work, I use a survey of senior visualization researchers and thinkers to ideate about the notion of progress in visualization research: how are we growing as a field, what are we building towards, and are our existing methods…
Clear presentation of uncertainty is an exception rather than rule in media articles, data-driven reports, and consumer applications, despite proposed techniques for communicating sources of uncertainty in data. This work considers, Why do…
Information visualizations are powerful tools that help users quickly identify patterns, trends, and outliers, facilitating informed decision-making. However, when visualizations incorporate deceptive design elements-such as truncated or…
Visualization has long been seen as a dependable and trustworthy tool for carrying out analysis and communication tasks -- a view reinforced by the growing interest in applying it to socially positive ends. However, despite the benign light…
Whilst fact verification has attracted substantial interest in the natural language processing community, verifying misinforming statements against data visualizations such as charts has so far been overlooked. Charts are commonly used in…
Better representation of the uncertainty in a data visualisation is a focus of recent research activity. A problem with the current literature is that there is a lack of clarity about the definition of uncertainty and what it means to…
Chartjunk is a popular yet contentious topic. Previous studies have shown that extreme minimalism is not always best, and that visual embellishments can be useful depending on the context. While more knowledge is being developed regarding…
The visualization community has a rich history of reflecting upon flaws of visualization design, and research in this direction has remained lively until now. However, three main gaps still exist. First, most existing work characterizes…
Although visualization tools are widely available and accessible, not everyone knows the best practices and guidelines for creating accurate and honest visual representations of data. Numerous books and articles have been written to expose…
Whenever a visualization researcher is asked about the purpose of visualization, the phrase "gaining insight" by and large pops out instinctively. However, it is not absolutely factual that all uses of visualization are for gaining a deep…
Uncertainty visualizations often emphasize point estimates to support magnitude estimates or decisions through visual comparison. However, when design choices emphasize means, users may overlook uncertainty information and misinterpret…
The trouble with data is that it frequently provides only an imperfect representation of a phenomenon of interest. Experts who are familiar with their datasets will often make implicit, mental corrections when analyzing a dataset, or will…
Designers often create visualizations to achieve specific high-level analytical or communication goals. These goals require people to naturally extract complex, contextualized, and interconnected patterns in data. While limited prior work…
As online news increasingly include data journalism, there is a corresponding increase in the incorporation of visualization in article thumbnail images. However, little research exists on the design rationale for visualization thumbnails,…
Research on cognitive biases and heuristics has become increasingly popular in the visualization literature in recent years. Researchers have studied the effects of biases on visualization interpretation and subsequent decision-making.…
Visualizations help communicate data insights, but deceptive data representations can distort their interpretation and propagate misinformation. While recent Vision Language Models (VLMs) perform well on many chart understanding tasks,…