Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
thegraphorganicallyanimatesfromonestatetotheotherlikealivingthing.
Playing with the slider should give you a taste of how mesmerizing graph
animation can be and how well it can sometimes communicate the gist of
change. It should also give you a sense of how difficult it can be to follow
what is happening in any great detail.
Once you have a sense of how the slider works, constrain the date range
to the first quarter of the time period. Let the layout settle a bit, and then
expand the range to the first half of the time period, about 16 months.
Figure 15-2
shows how the graph compares from the 8-month mark to the
16-month mark. Additional filters were applied to constrain labels to the
more significant nodes. At the 4-month point, two larger clusters are visible,
one at the bottom that contains a book about interpreting numbers, and one
at the top near another of Tufte's topics,
Visual Explanations
(Cheshire, CT:
Graphics Press, 1997). At the 8-month mark, it is clear that the lower cluster
has grown. However, the cluster at the top has dispersed, and it is not clear
exactly how.
