[spenrose]

"In this unhinged rant, I lay out my suspicion that a lot of visualiza- tions are bullshit: charts that do not have even the common decency to intentionally lie but are totally unconcerned about the state of the world or any practical utility. I suspect that bullshit charts take up a large fraction of the time and attention of actual visualization pro- ducers and consumers, and yet are seemingly absent from academic research into visualization design. ... It is my contention that many (most?) visualizations are bullshit in either the Frankfurt sense of attempting to persuade while being totally disconnected from notions of truths about the world, or in the Graeber sense of being created for no readily apparent purpose and to no real useful end. When they inform, these bullshit charts do so in the most superficial and unsatisfying ways— for instance, a bar chart might tell me that so-and-so many widgets were sold during a particular period of time"

[Tarq0n]

> "for instance, a bar chart might tell me that so-and-so many widgets were sold during a particular period of time"

Funny, considering that's a core part of Tableau's value proposition.

[vanderZwan]

If their product becomes saturated with bullshit charts it will hurt them in the long run.

Also, it's a sign that at the very least this person working there genuinely cares about the product they're selling, so that's good