Unclear... audience? logic? labels?
February 11, 2023 12:21 PM Subscribe
How to Play “Diagram Critique Bingo” by Abby Covert, information architect and author of How to Make Sense of Any Mess.
I don't think I'd ever heard of Abby Covert before seeing this post, but I really enjoyed the Diagram Critique Bingo piece, and I love her Practicing IA page, and I think I need to read everything she's written.
I'm not an IA professional, but I think the world would be a better place with happier people if we all took a little time to think about clarity in how we share ideas, so we can express ourselves more clearly and look for ways to identify and clarify unclear information.
This is really great, spamandkimchi, and I'm so glad you took the time to share it with us here at MeFi - especially with me! Thank you!
posted by kristi at 1:40 PM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm not an IA professional, but I think the world would be a better place with happier people if we all took a little time to think about clarity in how we share ideas, so we can express ourselves more clearly and look for ways to identify and clarify unclear information.
This is really great, spamandkimchi, and I'm so glad you took the time to share it with us here at MeFi - especially with me! Thank you!
posted by kristi at 1:40 PM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]
everything kristi said +1
posted by wowenthusiast at 10:37 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by wowenthusiast at 10:37 PM on February 11, 2023 [1 favorite]
That Bingo is a brilliant pedagogical tool. I shall propagate the sharing.
"Unnecessarily Exact Figures (1.986676538% vs. 1.98%)"
A pervasive annoyance: I had a smart final year project student some years ago who carefully transcribed, in ink, into their lab-book, all 10 "significant" figures of some results delivered by SPSS; it filled in a chunk of that page. I pointed to one of the many digits and asked what would be the consequence if that 7 was transcribed in error as 9.
And BobThePrecision(Tool) will point out that 1.986676538% rounds to 1.99% . . . and 2% is almost certainly good enough in that context.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the Post Office:
Tree: Do you sell postage stamps?
Employee: Yes, sir.
Tree: Show me some. [then pointing to one in the middle of the sheet] I'll have that one, please.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:14 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
"Unnecessarily Exact Figures (1.986676538% vs. 1.98%)"
A pervasive annoyance: I had a smart final year project student some years ago who carefully transcribed, in ink, into their lab-book, all 10 "significant" figures of some results delivered by SPSS; it filled in a chunk of that page. I pointed to one of the many digits and asked what would be the consequence if that 7 was transcribed in error as 9.
And BobThePrecision(Tool) will point out that 1.986676538% rounds to 1.99% . . . and 2% is almost certainly good enough in that context.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree in the Post Office:
Tree: Do you sell postage stamps?
Employee: Yes, sir.
Tree: Show me some. [then pointing to one in the middle of the sheet] I'll have that one, please.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:14 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm not even teaching at the moment and I'm excited about trying this out.
What elevates this beyond just a simple rubric marking group exercise is that the student talks through their own piece of work going for bingo.
This is really good. Thank you!
posted by freethefeet at 1:54 AM on February 12, 2023
What elevates this beyond just a simple rubric marking group exercise is that the student talks through their own piece of work going for bingo.
This is really good. Thank you!
posted by freethefeet at 1:54 AM on February 12, 2023
My people! The death penalty for those who post maps without legends.
posted by Meatbomb at 5:54 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Meatbomb at 5:54 AM on February 12, 2023 [1 favorite]
Neat! In my field, we have so much data to inspect, but I've been on the receiving end of waaaay too many visualizations that were poorly designed or downright mislead. Its led to a series of argumentative meetings with contradictory graphics, and in one case, I've lost a week to bad dashboard panels purporting to show a problem that didn't actually exist, built by people who were hired for their familiarity with Spark queries against data lakes instead of sound mathematical analysis.
To defend myself from these time vampires, I've slowly been picking up statistics with all the freetime the pandemic unlocked these past few years, and one of the areas I've been avoiding is visualizations. I've got to spend some time reading Tufte, and this paper on Dashboard Design patterns that was recommended earlier this year to me. And it seems like I need to add Abby Covert to the backlog too.
posted by pwnguin at 8:08 PM on February 12, 2023
To defend myself from these time vampires, I've slowly been picking up statistics with all the freetime the pandemic unlocked these past few years, and one of the areas I've been avoiding is visualizations. I've got to spend some time reading Tufte, and this paper on Dashboard Design patterns that was recommended earlier this year to me. And it seems like I need to add Abby Covert to the backlog too.
posted by pwnguin at 8:08 PM on February 12, 2023
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posted by feckless at 12:47 PM on February 11, 2023 [3 favorites]