[tptacek]

Is that a particularly effective graphic? Look at how the green doses transition to the orange ones (with a legend "all green doses combined" corresponding to an irregular number of orange boxes), and then look at the transition from orange to yellow; are all the orange doses equivalent to 50sv, or are all the orange doses equivalent to one box?

I agree that the XKCD "radiation" chart is an instance where an XKCD-style comic does a better job of explaining something than an equivalent well-written paragraph. But I don't agree that it's a particularly great visualization.

[Locke1689]

I would definitely agree that it isn't the best graphic, but I think it does an admirable job of portraying the primary thing it was created to portray (I assume) -- the context of radiation dose levels. I can very quickly eyeball the order of magnitude difference between a plane flight and a chest X-ray, while I could also dial down to the more precise differences if necessary.

The "radiation doses combined" transition seemed fairly clear to me. In every case the collective doses are measured in the new SI-prefixed unit delineated by the scale on the left. If I were to criticize anything I would be a little more wary of the color choices and the box labeling. The = sign and parenthetic dose notation seems a little confused (the blue box dose size uses a different convention from the others).

While the chart could layout some things a little more clearly, I think that Minard's chart shows that one shouldn't reduce information content solely for the sake of simplicity.

[tptacek]

I think the chart would do better if removed from the arbitrary constraint of XKCD's page framing; if, for instance, a suitably large canvas was used, so that the eyes could immediately grasp the comparatively minimal exposures from common radiation sources to (say) the gigantic exposures from Chernobyl.

It's clearly within Munroe's capability to make such a graphic; he did this one on a deadline. I'm not criticizing Munroe (though: not an XKCD fan), just making an objective assessment of the graphic.

And, like I said: here's a case where a graphic, even an imperfect one, probably communicates rich information more effectively than prose. Unlike the "relative sizes of data" infographic upthread.