Talk:Sparkline

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Inline?[edit]

I don't understand why the image of the DJA isn't inlined. htom 20:57, 12 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is this wiki page itself a good example of sparklines? I'd argue that this example is _anti_-sparkline, in that it takes a set of graphs and isolates them in their own box, in the traditional manner.

A much better example and explanation is on one of the referenced web pages, describing a Python library for them. Andy Dingley 16:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. Although they are also useful in a table, which is what is done here. —Ben FrantzDale 21:22, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Tufte's article shows clearly that the context of the sparkline should be visible - he gives examples of "normal range" (a grey box showing safe levels superimposed on the sparkline with the current value indicated in text, as well as examples with indexes showing minima and maxima values. I think the examples in the page are unsatisfactory as they're very poor on (value) context. 194.151.95.22 11:17, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On top of that, one of them’s missing – the Dow Jones and NASDAQ ones are identical (not merely similar), suggesting a mistake by the uploader. -Ahruman (talk) 15:05, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've inlined the Dow sparkline, but have no idea how to fix the other problem. —Preceding unsigned comment added by OtterSmith (talk • contribs) 21:36, 11 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Invisible examples[edit]

these are waaaay too light. thicken the line a bit. they are barely visible on my monitor. --98.217.8.46 (talk) 19:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have to second this, I can barely see the examples. I found a new darker version of the Dow sparkline on Commons by happenstance, and put it in the article. -- Cyrius|✎ 12:06, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Dow Nasdaq duplicate[edit]

Am I the only one who finds the reuse of the same graphic for the supposed dow and nasdaq at least distracting? Is there a proper image that should be used? — gogobera (talk) 20:21, 19 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No definition[edit]

Am I crazy, or does this article completely fail to include a clear definition of what a sparkline actually is? Some of its features are mentioned (small size, appearing in text), and some of its uses ('present trends and variations associated with some measurement"), but no definition. From the examples given I can infer that a sparkline is a small line chart embedded in and about the same height as a line of text. Is that correct? If so, the article should state that; if not, the article should say that not all sparklines meet that description. AJD (talk) 18:12, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah....I don't think you're crazy. I have this article on my watchlist for some reason and I have never been able to get a good answer (course I don't think I ever asked). Is it really just a time series plot about the same size as a line of text w/ a little dot at the end? Protonk (talk) 20:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not always, but usually a time series (as are most charts!) The idea is that you scan the line in the text, rather than having to find the box, scan the line, and then return to the text, find your place, and then continue reading. Frequently the line is also in a larger form for more detailed examination if desired. htom (talk) 15:52, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Update on the example images, 31-1-2012[edit]

I increased the thickness of the S&P 500 sparkline (using Inkscape) and I removed the Nasdaq sparkline because that was actually a duplicate Dow Jones sparkline. Arthena ^(talk) 15:30, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted; the example of using a Sparkline had been removed (yes, it was a duplicate of a Sparkline in the box.) To my eye, the three lines in the box are subtly different. Just darkening the four lines might be a good change. htom (talk) 15:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, I should not have removed the example below. The current state of the figure is a little misleading though. We don't seem to have any actual image of a Nasdaq sparkline: the image next to 'Nasdaq' is just the Dow Jones image (Image:Sparkline_dowjones.svg, with darkened version Image:Sparkline_dowjones new.svg). I guess it's not a big problem though, since it's just for illustration. Arthena ^(talk) 19:41, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I made the lines thicker. You can actually see the one in the text now :) Arthena ^(talk) 19:57, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thinking about it some more, I do think the fake 'Nasdaq' line (which is actually the Dow Jones line) should be removed, it is misleading, and doesn't add anything. Arthena ^(talk) 20:07, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The bold is decidedly better. Could you remove the "fake Nasdaq" line from the box, and bold the two DJA lines (both the one in the box, and the one outside the box?) I still see a very slight difference there, but it could be that one of them is slightly shifted to the right on my monitor. htom (talk) 22:19, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the Nasdaq line. I'm a little confused about what you want bolding. There are now two images used in the article, File:Sparkline dowjones new.svg (used as first image in the box, and for the in-text example) and File:Sparkline sp500.svg (the second image in the box). I've already made both of these images bolder (you can see how they changed by scrolling down to file history on the image page). Do you mean they should be bolder still? Arthena ^(talk) 22:51, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Forcing a refresh of graphics helps. :( On my screen, the sp500 image is near-black, while the dowjones image is :shrugs: a 50% grey in the box, and a 30% grey in the text example? This is definitely far into the fiddly fussing corrections area; most of the Sparklines I've seen in the wild have been grey (or lightly colored.) htom (talk) 23:25, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Example[edit]

Putting the example directly into the article text doesn't sit right with me. Is there any particular reason that it can't be put into a quote (and not a "pull quote" as this diff says)? Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 09:06, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read Tufte on the subject? If not, then buy the book(s). You work in IT? You should have office copies of the whole set. Otherwise at least read the Gheorghiu ref.

The point about sparklines is that they should be embedded in the text. The idea is to de-emphasise the previous veneration of the inforaphic. Tufte's core argument is that this past treatment of them as being like plates in a book, bound into separate signatures, isolates the graphs from their description and leads to them being ignored, or at least ignored at the time of reading the text, where they're most needed. Most complex quantitative graphics do not need to be so complicated - they're just there to communicate one simple qualitative point. A sparkline without axes can still do this, and embedding it into the text does it in the most effective manner.

Where sets of sparklines are needed as a set (some data just doesn't fit into a single sparkline), then Tufte does also describe the small multiple approach for sets of them. These are too big to inline, but nor are they still entirely true to the sparkline concept.

Your edits here are quite wrong and have broken the whole point of the article. Editing an article before having read it, understood it, or certainly before having read the background sources, will do that. Then when your several edits were reverted because each and every one of them made the article worse, you simply edit-warred to re-apply them.

In particular, the lead graphic isn't a sparkline. It's a contrast between the pre-sparkline approach with axes and labels, alongside the simplified sparkline of the same data. Yet now you've labelled this as "a sparkline"! when that's the complete opposite of what it is and why it was there. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:35, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've long since stopped caring about your arguments from authority as they're so commonly thrown about; I would imagine most other editors familiar with your, ummm, debating style would have done so too, so knock it off. The same with your using rollback to mass-revert a series of edits and then describing a complete reworking of said edits intended to address your supposed point as "edit warring". Regarding the images, the image in the infobox is the same image as used in the article body: it has no axes. If it is intended to compare the sparkline approach with a traditional graph, shouldn't the contrast be with a traditional graph? And I know that sparklines should be used inline with the text, but the issue is presenting that to the reader, and it is jarring to do so without at least setting the example off in a quote (which is an extremely common way of presenting some concept on the encyclopedia). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:07, 27 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple issues[edit]

I was asked to elaborate on the multi issue. I think it's straightforward. The Tufte sources break WP:SPS and should be sourced from a WP:THIRDPARTY. Re: original research, the lead is unsourced and not because it's repeating obvious elements of the article's body. Also see:

The first implementation of this, called "inline charts", can be traced to the PC trading platform Medved QuoteTracker, in 1998.

The source for this quote is self-published. These issues and without confirmation of "freepatentsonline.com" as a RS (because it sure doesn't appear to be at first blush), call for the "unreliable sources" tag. Happy to discuss further—I'm putting the tags back. czar · · 08:19, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Modern publishers know how to publish books they want to publish; they are inclined to edit and redesign works to fit into their pre-existing world of publishing, a poor approach to take to publish a book that emphasizes designs publishers have intentionally excluded from their model of publishing, and they declined to publish TVDOQI without that redesign, which would have pretty much destroyed the visual display he was presenting. So rather than have it filtered through a process that would destroy it ... he published it himself, rather like Knuth's adventure into typesetting which gave us TeX and MetaFont before TaoCP. Calling Tufte's books on visual presentation SPS really makes me wonder if you've read any of them, or any of the reviews of them. I suspect this rule against self-publishing is probably why there are no pages for his books; that's a sad demonstration of too-closely adhering to a rule that had a good intention. If that's why those pages don't exist, or your only complaint, you need to look at the real book and decide if the discrimination is warranted.

http://www.computingreviews.com/review/review_review.cfm?review_id=112419

http://www.csiss.org/classics/content/44

htom (talk) 05:41, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The idea behind WP:SPS is that a WP:THIRDPARTY (independent) source would be able to confirm Tufte's breakthroughs if they are indeed notable, and that notability shouldn't depend on his self-judgment (his own statements about himself). FWIW, I've read his books and attended his lecture. I regard him highly—he has some really great stuff. But these policy points are separate from my opinion of his work => this article needs more third-party appraisals of his impact (particularly regarding sparklines). czar · · 17:07, 21 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Topic notability[edit]

Separate concern: I am skeptical of this topic's notability by lack of RS. I think this article would make more sense in the context of all inline charts. czar · · 08:19, 20 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sparklines are a big deal in the data visualization community and satisfy WP:GNG. Andrew³²⁷ 17:00, 11 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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History[edit]

The idea of small single-line graphs with no axes dates to before 1998. They were being used at CERN in at least 1996 (although probably earlier) for real-time instrument monitoring data. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.63.181.1 (talk) 13:51, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So source it and add it.

I was doing these myself (also for real-time instrumentation) in the late 1980s, because there wasn't enough processor time to do anything else as well. "Sparklines", as described by Tufte though, have a context of being simplified for their clarity, in a context where they could have been produced to be much more complex (but would then be less clear to comprehend quickly, or would use more page real estate). Andy Dingley (talk) 14:07, 29 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Zelchenko/Medved/QuoteTracker contributions[edit]

Working with User:Zelchenko to add citations here and integrate into main article, bear with us in the meantime. Thomas Craven (talk) 14:20, 6 November 2017 (UTC) Thomas Craven EDITED: (talk) 14:23, 6 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Binary sparklines[edit]

Should the article include binary sparklines, that is, graphs without Y-axis? E.g. if you are monitoring for errors over time, and the state is either 0 or 1, this would result in a dashed line over time. Real world example. Bjornte (talk) 14:10, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Do they meet Tufte's definition of sparklines?

In the example you give, I'd say no. Not because of the line style, but because they're an intensive data set, with several variables and labelled axes - that makes them a full blown graph.

In a simplified case (which meets Tufte's definition) I'd say they could be - although I'd probably favour a line graph, as I think it would be more readable. From the work on preattentive attributes (we still need an article there [1]), position conveys information more rapidly and reliably than presence/absence does. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:38, 11 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]