Hello all,
With the COVID-19 pandemic still happening I wanted to take some time to look at the impact of color in figures.
I took a data visualization course last semester and we talked about the importance of color on evoking emotion from data. Consider the CDC’s community level color scheme (top) to their community transmission color scheme (bottom), one clearly “looks worse” than the other.
This is because the highest transmission color is red, compared to the highest community level color of orange. So, what happens when we compare the community level map (top) but use the colors from the community transmission map (bottom).
The bottom figure looks a *lot* more red, and, frankly, scarier than the top figure. The CDC’s choice to use orange as “High” in the top figure is to reduce mass panic, however, maybe some panic is warranted given the levels of transmission.
See full thread on Twitter. Alright, I should really be studying for my comprehensive exams!