Teaching:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2009/10 - Gruppe 09 - Aufgabe 2
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Aufgabenstellung[edit]
Zu beurteilende Tabelle[edit]
Review of the Existing Table[edit]
We have reviewed the table above based on Stephen Few's work "Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten" which contains some important rules and advices in view of designing tables.
- A grid is used to delineate columns and rows of the table, which should be avoided as grids break up the data.
- Rules are used to form a boundary around the entire table, which should be avoided if white space permits.
- Numbers in scientific notation are hard to read and not easily comparable to each other.
- Numbers are not aligned properly (numbers that represent quantitative values should always be aligned to the right)
- The headers should be aligned with the associated data. This is international.
- Placing a comma to the left of every three whole-number digits would improve the readability.
- The readability would also be improved if for each value the same number of decimal digits is going to be used, even when they are zeroes.
Enhanced Table[edit]
Changes to the Table[edit]
- The table has been split into two separate tables, as the numbers of the two blocks are not comparable.
- The grid has been removed, as delineation of columns and rows is its least effective use [Few, 2004]. Only the header areas are separated from the body of the tables using rules.
- Columns and rows are delineated using white space only, which enhances readability [Few, 2004].
- The U-235 enrichment column is delineated from the rest of the body, as it is a calculated value based on the other columns.
- A percent sign was added to each value in the U-235 enrichment column because percentages are used less often than other units of measure, so it’s easy when reading down columns of numbers to forget that you’re looking at percentages [Few, 2004].
- Numbers are aligned to the right.
- The Unit-column has been removed, because they should be part of the headers [Wallace, 2005]. In our case the units are now part of the spanner headers.
- In general, text should always be aligned to the left! Furthermore one exception to the practice of left alignment works well for columns of text: when the entries each consist of the same number of characters and the column header consists of several more characters than the text entries [Few, 2004]. So I think it also works very well in view of numbers.
Referenzen[edit]
[Few, 2004] Stephen Few. Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten. Analytics Press, 2004, Chapter 8 – Table Design
[Wallace, 2005] Rosa Wallace. Designing Tables. http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite/res/gh/gh-tables.html