This afternoon my wife, three daughters (2, 4 and 7 years old) and I decided to do some data visualisation together. Kas (my wife) came up with the idea of getting the 'data' from their favourite books. The Cuisenaire rods were a recent acquisition from grandma and grandpa (one from my childhood).
What data should we collect? We decided that everybody would choose their 5 favourite books, rank them and give them an overall score out of 10. To delve a little more into what made a great book, we then scored each person's top book according to five variables; Story, Illustration, Characters, Style and Longevity.
The girls sensibly used a bar rather than a column chart, so that we could read the book titles easily while keeping the bars an aesthetically pleasing distance from each other.
Road Dahl's books are ever-present especially with our eldest so Matilda winning was no surprise.
We then made some small multiples to tell us a little bit about how our favourite books differed from each other's.
We all needed a great story, and unsurprisingly these were all books with top marks in longevity, apart from for my 2 year old who decided her favourite book was only worth a score of two in that category. Illustration/Drawings were also important, especially to my eldest who is a bit of a budding artist.
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