Veronica Penney's data visualization shared in her article, Electric Cars Are Better for the Planet - and Often Your Budget Too, overall, does a good job in illustrating how electric cars are easily more climate friendly than gas-burning cars and often cheaper per mile. In her chart, she visualizes the average amount of carbon dioxide emissions per mile and average cost per month, comparing electric cars, hybrid cars, and traditional gas-powered cars, that all retail for $55,000 or less.
This dotted map chart was definitely pleasing and simple to look at. With my first glance at the data, I was able to clearly distinguish which colour represents the different type of car from the descriptions beside them on the chart. I liked how the colours that she chose weren't overwhelming to the eyes and that she sectioned the three categories with a bubble that surrounded the dots. I could also answer any questions that I have about this topic just by using this data visualization. I'm able to see how there really are not many electric cars made yet in comparison to the many gas-powered cars. It's also clear that the average amount of traditional gas-powered cars cost more than electric cars.
Something that was confusing at first would be that there are so many dots on the chart but only four were actually labelled onto it. I then found out a link under the photo that led me to an interactive version in which hovering my mouse over the dot revealed the different car models. I think that the interactive visualization definitely made the chart make more sense. However, since there are many gas-powered cars that retail less than $55,000, it did make her chart seem very cluttered in that section since there were even multiple dots layered on top of each other. I think that the visualization in this interactive dotted map could've been simpler and less cluttered/confusing if she narrowed her data down, or calculated a total average per category, or if instead, I think a line chart could've worked as well with comparing the three car types. A line chart could've worked as well because the differences between electric cars, hybrid and traditional, are pretty far apart from each other. I think that she could've calculated the total average per month and total carbon dioxide, per car category and placed only three lines which showed the clear differences in data.
