{"id":432,"date":"2026-01-30T12:27:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T17:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/?p=432"},"modified":"2026-01-30T12:28:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T17:28:48","slug":"the-litmus-test-for-plots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/the-litmus-test-for-plots\/","title":{"rendered":"The litmus test for plots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Several people have asked permission to modify the structure of the plot produced by the original <tt>wichita.py<\/tt> program; for instance, by changing scales, adding or removing axes, using different color\/style combos for the lines, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the answer for this particular question, and for all future infographics you may ever create. The <em>only<\/em> important question to ask is: &#8220;<strong>does this plot convey the necessary information clearly?<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If the answer is &#8220;yes,&#8221; then it&#8217;s an acceptable plot, no matter how many axes or what colors you used.<\/p>\n<p>If the answer is &#8220;no,&#8221; then it&#8217;s <i>not<\/i> an acceptable plot, no matter how many axes or what colors you used.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, I promise I will never get mad if you made different plotting choices than I would have, as long as the viewer can correctly interpret what the data behind the plot means.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several people have asked permission to modify the structure of the plot produced by the original wichita.py program; for instance, by changing scales, adding or removing axes, using different color\/style combos for the lines, etc. Here&#8217;s the answer for this particular question, and for all future infographics you may ever create. The only important question [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephendavies.org\/data420\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}