Chart Doctor Started 9/30/06
I started my Chart Doctor feature at ProcessTrends.Com way back on 9/30/06:
Chart Doctor – This new page presents examples of published charts that have been improved/ enhanced with the use of Cleveland/ Tufte data visualization principles and Excel charting techniques presented in this site.
I got the idea for this page from Kaiser Fung’s Junk_Charts.com site, one of my favorite data visualization sites. Kaiser clips interesting charts/graphs from publications and critiques them from a data visualization standpoint, often presenting one or more alternative ways to display the data more effectively.
Borrowing Junk_charts.com‘s approach, from time to time, I will present a published chart, diagnose it’s data visualization health and produce an Excel version. Readers are encouraged to perform their own surgery on my chart. I’ll be happy to post any effective chart surgery results that readers submit.
I gave full credit for the idea to Kaiser Fung.
Who Are These New Chart Doctors
On 6/12/09, 21 months after I introduced Excel Chart Doctor, Chandoo and Jon Peltier announce that they are adding a Chart Doctor feature to their blogs.
This comes as quit a surprise. I started the feature 21 months earlier with full credit to Kaiser Fung as the source of my idea. Chandoo and Jon got the same idea 21 months later, apparently without any inspiration from Kaiser’s JunkChart site or my Excel Chart Doctor page.
I wrote a comment to Chandoo pointing out my Chart Doctor page and asking for an explanation. No response yet.
Original Chart Doctor Statistics
I am proud of my ProcessTrends.com site. I get about 20,000 unique visitors each month and I’ve had 77,000 downloads of 83 different Excel workbook solutions in the past year.
I’ve had a little over 34,000 visitors to my Chart Doctor page in the past year.
Other Names
I encourage Chandoo and Jon to pursue their plans, I just ask that they use another name. Here are a few possibilities:
- Medical Theme:
- Chart Hospital
- Chart Clinic
- Chart Therapy
- Chart Nurse
- Chart Physician
- Chart Surgeon
- Chart Veterinarian
- Other Themes
- Chart Master
- Chart Guru
- Chart Rehabilitation
- Chart Rehab
- Chart Overhaul
- Chart Redo
- Chart Handyman
It’s clear that Chandoo and Jon have 100′s of other name possibilities. Why pick on my name?
Can you offer any suggestions to Chandoo and Jon?
Reader Advice
Readers, I need your advice. Is this a big deal or just a little nothing? Should I laugh and forget about it or complain to Chandoo and Jon?
Please give me your thoughts on this. As a small time blogger, I don’t have any advertising and I don’t run boot camps or Excel MVP training classes in Atlantic City. All I have is my work which I provide to other Excel and R users. All I ask in return is a little respect and credit if someone uses my ideas or work.
Should I chalk this up to another Excel Deja Vu All over Again or is it something more? What do you think?
look at the makeover shows: Make me a SuperChart, Extreme Makeover Chart Edition.
I like Chart Therapy since we really don’t want to completely remake the data, just make it socially acceptable in its presentation.
For a more industrial name, Reforging the Chart?
One attendee at a recent training session described her profession as “Worksheet Therapist”. I found it strangely descriptive.
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I’d say three business days, but I don’t begrudge you your opinion on the matter.
Dick
In this case my comment was hidden in Chandoo’s Akismet spam folder. Glad to have teh issue over and done with.
Kelly -
Chandoo and I seem to have touched off quite a controversy with our new Chart Doctor segment. We did not intend to infringe on anyone’s territory, and while we may have used the same phrase you used for a page title (and that several third-party charting products have used), we did not take the idea from you or from Kaiser.
The before and after (take something bad, and make it good) format is common. Kaiser has used it, you have used it, I believe Juice Analytics has used it, I have used it. In fact, you have used the technique in your blog to show how to implement features that I’ve demonstrated in Excel, using R.
The bad chart/good chart format makes up a fair number of the posts on my blog, and ironically the first such post on my blog, Clustered Bars as an Alternative to Stacked Bars or Bubbles, was posted on the same day as the most recent example on your Chart Doctor page.
In the intervening fifteen months, I guess I’d forgotten that you had a Chart Doctor page. If I had remembered, I would have suggested a different topic label to Chandoo, or at least spoken to you first.
As Chandoo hints, a simple email reminding us of your existing page title would have resolved this unintentional conflict without putting everyone on the defensive and leaving a sour taste in our mouths.
I consider myself a small-time blogger, because my blog is just a tiny part of my business’ main efforts. I run third-party ads to cover my hosting costs, and PTS-specific ones to let potential customers and clients know about the training services and commercial utilities my business offers. But the PTS web site and blog, and all of their explanations and tutorials, are what I share with the community.
Jon
Thanks for the comment. Best of luck on your new feature.
Kelly,
I think that you should assume that it was an honest mistake and that they didn’t know or didn’t remember that you had used that term. People are innocent until proven guilty. Let’s wait and see if they change their term.
Naomi
Thanks for the advice. You were correct, it was a case of Akismet flagging my comment to Chandoo as spam.
Hi Kelly,
It is nice to know you (although I would have *loved*to know on a more friendly note than something awkward like this). I am sorry to know that you are hurt by our usage of the term chart doctor.
When I proposed the idea to Jon, I had no clue it was already existing or you have used it. I never really googled the term or anything like that. It came to my mind, and I immediately wrote to Jon asking if he is up for the a series of posts.
I firmly believe that ideas are free. It is on my blog policy as well. We encourage readers to take the ideas and use them however they wish. (read the last paragraph on this page: http://chandoo.org/wp/policies/)
That said, I still stand by statement that I have no clue you have already provided a whole series of posts with this title.
I dont mean to hurt you when I came up with the title. It just came to my mind. Both Jon and me run a lot of blog posts around the theme of showcasing a bad chart and suggesting an improvement. We just thought it would be natural to collaborate and extend the ideas.
How about this? Would you like to be part of this new series of posts, we three can take turns and suggest improvements of poorly made charts. That way you get a chance to revisit the series and all our readers get to enjoy it a lot more.
Let me know.
PS: your comment was marked by Akismet as spam (it had too many links I guess). After seeing this post, I went and searched in my spam and retrieved it.
PPS: I really love processtrends and have been a huge fan of your work for such a long time.
Chandoo. Thanks for getting my comment out of Akismet spam jail.
Best of luck on your new feature.
Kelly
Dick:
I wrote to him on 6/12/09, about an hour after his post appeared.
I’d say 1-2 days is a far time to respond, at least let me know he got my message and was considering it.
Kelly
“I wrote a comment to Chandoo pointing out my Chart Doctor page and asking for an explanation. No response yet.”
What do you think is a reasonable time to respond to your inquiry?