What is going on with these graphics?

rtkwe · on Dec 15, 2014

It's an XKCD styled graph by the looks of it. There are a couple generators out there that take data and make the hand drawn looking graphs. e.g http://xkcdgraphs.com/

simonster · on Dec 15, 2014

Also, matplotlib, the most commonly-used Python plotting package, can generate xkcd-ized plots with a single additional command (see http://matplotlib.org/xkcd/examples/showcase/xkcd.html).

jff · on Dec 15, 2014

And they look fucking awful.

flopto · on Dec 15, 2014

They're supposed to look hastily-made to reflect the imprecision in the estimates.

https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/why_xkcd_style_graph...

desdiv · on Dec 15, 2014

I love the general idea of comic-style graphs, but this particular implementation of it does indeed look "fucking awful" in my opinion. The graph itself is fine, but the axis is made of these faux wavy line that eerily repeats itself.

userbinator · on Dec 16, 2014

The graph itself is fine, but the axis is made of these faux wavy line that eerily repeats itself.

I see the same things in fonts that are supposed to look "hand-drawn", and CG renders of realistic scenes - it looks "imperfect" but the way the "imperfection" is itself perfect is what stands out. A little randomness goes a long way to avoiding that.

bsder · on Dec 15, 2014

Except that there really isn't imprecision in the estimates. The numbers are really quite precise and the confidence interval is actually very good. Far better than an XKCD style should be used for.

I use XKCD stuff for WAG's, not well-supported data.