Junk Viz - When More is Less

There are examples of junk visualizations, and then there are examples of junk charts that just take your breath away.

The Indian news portal, FirstPost.in, which describes itself as a "trusted guide to the crush of news and ideas around you", published a story titled Shivraj set for massive victory in Madhya Pradesh: Survey | Firstpost, which has this chart (link to the image) - take a minute to study it. Then study it again. It is no optical illusion or card-trick being played here.

OBIEE 11.1.1.7.131017 Bundle Patch Now Available

A new bundle patch for Oracle Business Intelligence became available last week. This is OBIEE Bundle Patch 11.1.1.7.131017, and is available on the following platforms:

• HP-UX  Itanium
• IBM AIX on POWER Systems (64-bit)
• Linux x86
• Linux x86-64
• Microsoft Windows (32-bit)
• Microsoft Windows (64-bit)
• Oracle Solaris on x86-64 (64-bit)

It is applicable to all customers running OBIEE versions 11.1.1.7.0 and 11.1.1.7.1

HBR and Junk Charts

Even the best can get it wrong. Only sometimes though, one hopes.
The venerable Harvard Business Review gets data visualizations horribly wrong. They have a post on Facebook where they contrast the costs of cancer treatment in the US and India.

The cost in the US is $22,000 on average, while in India it is shown as $2,900 (I would dispute this figure, as it looks very low).
The ratios is 7.58:1 (22000÷2900)