Deceptive visualizations

The daily pothole NYC DOT blog shows off this "pretty" summary of potholes covered during the last 31 days [1]. That's great, but because the map is so small, these dots look like they cover a large area while the dots themselves are big so you can see them.






The problem is similar to the one during te Dec 2010 snow storm. It was difficult to know what streets were getting cleaned up and which needed to be cleaned again. The City uses the beautiful 311 system to crowd-source to get updates on potholes and road snow issues. But because that infrmation is not presented along side potholes that were fixed, you do not get a complete picture about the city's overall responsiveness .

I still love the effort they put into this data collection. Makes me proud.


[1]
http://thedailypothole.tumblr.com/photo/1280/3316951936/1/tumblr_lgonom6bBN1qg9dmn