2 add r code edited Apr 20 '12 at 4:12 naught101 2,3474040 silver badges7575 bronze badges One thing that I seem to remember Tufte mentioning, that isn't in the other answers is mapping - that is, make position, direction, size, etc. on your graph represent reality. What is up on the graph should be up in the real world. What is big should be big (keeping in mind that areas should represent areas, and volumes volumes. Never try to represent a scalar value by an area, it's highly ambiguous!). This also applies to colours, shapes, etc, if they are relevant. An interesting example is the "skirt series" graph here: http://a-little-book-of-r-for-time-series.readthedocs.org/en/latest/src/timeseries.html. While technically it's correct, and a "taller" skirt length occupies a higher position on the graph, it's actually quite confusing, because skirt length starts from the top, and goes down (unlike humans, or trees, where we measure the height from the ground). So increased skirt length actually represents a lower value:   skirts <- scan("http://robjhyndman.com/tsdldata/roberts/skirts.dat",skip=5) skirtsseries <- ts(skirts,start=c(1866)) plot.ts(skirtsseries, ylim=c(max(skirts),min(skirts)))  There are, as always, difficulties. For example, we generally consider time to move forward, and in the west, at least, we read left to right, so our time-series graphs also usually flow left to right as time increases. So what happens if you want to represent something that's best represented laterally (e.g. east-west measurements of something), over time? In that case, you have to compromise, and either portray time a moving up or down (which one depends again on cultural perceptions, I guess), or choose to map your lateral variable to up/down on your graph. One thing that I seem to remember Tufte mentioning, that isn't in the other answers is mapping - that is, make position, direction, size, etc. on your graph represent reality. What is up on the graph should be up in the real world. What is big should be big (keeping in mind that areas should represent areas, and volumes volumes. Never try to represent a scalar value by an area, it's highly ambiguous!). This also applies to colours, shapes, etc, if they are relevant. An interesting example is the "skirt series" graph here: http://a-little-book-of-r-for-time-series.readthedocs.org/en/latest/src/timeseries.html. While technically it's correct, and a "taller" skirt length occupies a higher position on the graph, it's actually quite confusing, because skirt length starts from the top, and goes down (unlike humans, or trees, where we measure the height from the ground). So increased skirt length actually represents a lower value:   There are, as always, difficulties. For example, we generally consider time to move forward, and in the west, at least, we read left to right, so our time-series graphs also usually flow left to right as time increases. So what happens if you want to represent something that's best represented laterally (e.g. east-west measurements of something), over time? In that case, you have to compromise, and either portray time a moving up or down (which one depends again on cultural perceptions, I guess), or choose to map your lateral variable to up/down on your graph. One thing that I seem to remember Tufte mentioning, that isn't in the other answers is mapping - that is, make position, direction, size, etc. on your graph represent reality. What is up on the graph should be up in the real world. What is big should be big (keeping in mind that areas should represent areas, and volumes volumes. Never try to represent a scalar value by an area, it's highly ambiguous!). This also applies to colours, shapes, etc, if they are relevant. An interesting example is the "skirt series" graph here: http://a-little-book-of-r-for-time-series.readthedocs.org/en/latest/src/timeseries.html. While technically it's correct, and a "taller" skirt length occupies a higher position on the graph, it's actually quite confusing, because skirt length starts from the top, and goes down (unlike humans, or trees, where we measure the height from the ground). So increased skirt length actually represents a lower value: skirts <- scan("http://robjhyndman.com/tsdldata/roberts/skirts.dat",skip=5) skirtsseries <- ts(skirts,start=c(1866)) plot.ts(skirtsseries, ylim=c(max(skirts),min(skirts)))  There are, as always, difficulties. For example, we generally consider time to move forward, and in the west, at least, we read left to right, so our time-series graphs also usually flow left to right as time increases. So what happens if you want to represent something that's best represented laterally (e.g. east-west measurements of something), over time? In that case, you have to compromise, and either portray time a moving up or down (which one depends again on cultural perceptions, I guess), or choose to map your lateral variable to up/down on your graph. 1 answered Apr 20 '12 at 1:29 naught101 2,3474040 silver badges7575 bronze badges One thing that I seem to remember Tufte mentioning, that isn't in the other answers is mapping - that is, make position, direction, size, etc. on your graph represent reality. What is up on the graph should be up in the real world. What is big should be big (keeping in mind that areas should represent areas, and volumes volumes. Never try to represent a scalar value by an area, it's highly ambiguous!). This also applies to colours, shapes, etc, if they are relevant. An interesting example is the "skirt series" graph here: http://a-little-book-of-r-for-time-series.readthedocs.org/en/latest/src/timeseries.html. While technically it's correct, and a "taller" skirt length occupies a higher position on the graph, it's actually quite confusing, because skirt length starts from the top, and goes down (unlike humans, or trees, where we measure the height from the ground). So increased skirt length actually represents a lower value: There are, as always, difficulties. For example, we generally consider time to move forward, and in the west, at least, we read left to right, so our time-series graphs also usually flow left to right as time increases. So what happens if you want to represent something that's best represented laterally (e.g. east-west measurements of something), over time? In that case, you have to compromise, and either portray time a moving up or down (which one depends again on cultural perceptions, I guess), or choose to map your lateral variable to up/down on your graph. Post Made Community Wiki by naught101 occurred Apr 20 '12 at 1:29