Talk about pushing the limits. This week’s dataset will certainly make quite a few people uncomfortable, but it’s just data. Rows and colums, nothing more, nothing less.

Yes, it might be a risque topic for people to viz and tweet about, but most people in the community are adults and I’m sure they can handle it.

Andy and I discussed for quite some time how this week would play out and we consulted a couple of our friends from the Tableau and MakeoverMonday community to seek their input.

We don’t force people to participate but I know that some are super keen to participate in every makeover and won’t feel comfortable with this week. That’s okay. There is always the option to just treat it like a sample set and change aliases and make up a whole new story about the data. You don’t need to talk about orgasms or sex or homosexual relationships if that makes you uncomfortable.

For the rest of the people though, I am excited to see how they approach the topic.

Now let’s get into this week’s viz and challenge…

The original viz was created by Anna Vital and looks like this:

 

 

What I like about it:

• I actually quite like the viz overall
• the colours are nice and not ‘typical’ male/female colours
• the % values are nice and large so it’s east to focus on these results
• I like that Anna starts with the group that has the lowest likelihood of orgasm, because that helps focus the viewers attention on it, rather than going in descending order which would maybe diminishing the significance of the issue
• I like the icons

 

What I don’t like about it:

• the meaning of the shading of the icons depicting each group isn’t that easy to interpret
• the icon for ‘orgasm likelihood’ is a bit busy for my liking
• why are the ‘orgasm’ icons not shaded in the same peachy hue as the figures?
• I think I would prefer the % values at the end of each row instead of the beginning

 

What I did:

Imagine you live in a street with different houses. Everyone in your neighbourhood gets to watch the same awesome new blockbuster. But of the heterosexual women, only around 2/3 get to watch the whole movie, while almost all of their male counterparts get to see the entire movie – popcorn, ice cream, softdrink and closing credits!

Or picture yourself sitting at a table with a number of different couples. You all order your meals and your heterosexual male friends tuck in, munch their way through entrees, mains and desserts, while your heterosexual and bisexual female friends get their food taken away after eating just two thirds of their meals… Sounds pretty unfair, doesn’t it?

That’s why this data is important. Awkward? It’s just sex, no big deal. But clearly there is something going on that means that a sizable proportion of the sexually active population isn’t getting everything they’ve hoped for…