John posts this graph from Simon Jackman showing the voting patterns of U.S. senators. Simon made a good graphical display, and I like how graphical display is becoming the standard, so much so that people who don’t like graphs are reduced to grousing about it. It’s fun to be on the popular side for a change.
Anyway, I have a couple of quick suggestions which I’ll share for all of you, because they might be helpful more generally:
1. Consider the size and shape of the graph. In this case, I don’t think the 2-column format makes any sense at all! Better would be to put them all on one long vertical strip–this would actually fit better on the blog and make everything more readable.
2. Use a mix of capital and lower-case letters–i.e., English–rather than the much less readable ALL CAPS. There’s software to convert words to lower-case, so you don’t actually have to retype the 100 names.