The Greatest Debate in DataViz: Chartjunk

No term in the data visualization lexicon is better known than "chartjunk". It was popularized in the 1980s by Edward Tufte, and has become the scourge of many a data visualization practitioner ever since–something to be avoided at all costs!

Chartjunk is also the mostly hotly debated issue in data visualization (well, OK, maybe it's tied with "are pie charts good or bad?") And this debate rages today, despite the fact that it has been nicely settled by research and common sense, which rejects just about any black and white statement like "embellishments are bad" or "embellishments are essential".

So I thought I'd do a quick lesson summarizing the concept of Chartjunk and sharing a point of view on it.

And, more importantly, I spoke with Nigel Holmes , one of the legends in the field. His work was famously derided by Tufte as "chartjunk" and his work was also studied in that research that found that visual embellishments are, in fact, just fine–and potentially a force for good!

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