First off, thanks for the reminder that thingspace can map very differently depending on which dimensions you choose to filter on! It’s difficult to really grok that idea in a sufficiently general way, I’ve noticed, and I feel like this was much more surprising that it should have been. I think reframing “tree” and “fish” as strategies may end up being an important takeaway.
Question: Apples not (botanically) a fruit how? Are they not the seed-bearing mature ovum of a plant? I feel like I missed something there.
Accessibility note: I totally might have started with the same colors you chose for your tree diagram! To my eye, they scream “woody thing” and “leafy thing” and “something like both”. But also, the yellow and the brown are nearly indistinguishable on my monitor with the blue-reducer turned on, and all three hues sit in the part of color-space that gets kinda muddy to folks with certain kinds of reduced-color vision. Possible adjustments: you could add a shape component to each node (e.g. rounded corners, lozenge, square corners, hexagons), use different border styles (e.g. thin, thick, dotted, double-lined), and/or choose colors with very different values if you want to keep those (admittedly information-rich) hues (e.g. pastel green (maybe with dark text), walnut brown (maybe with white text), mossy green (maybe the text has a border to make it stand out)). The goal is to be able to distinguish the differences easily in a grayscale rendering of the image.
Thank you so much! Re: question: Well, they’re not “normal” fruits, at least—they’re accessory fruits. I don’t know much else about the botanical definitions other than that.
Also, the accessibility point is very much appreciated. I’ve updated the graphic to take that into account—would love your thoughts on the improved one? Either way, I very much appreciate both the raising-the-issue and the suggestions on improvements!
Not a “real” fruit because the flesh is a product of some tissue adjacent to the ovum instead of within it. That sounds oddly nit-picky to me, even for scientists. Do you think this might be an important distinction for some non-taxes reason, or are botanists just really pedantic sometimes?
Well done on the new graphic! It’s much easier to read now: I like the choice to use the darkest color and heaviest border for the “Definitely a tree” category, since that makes them pop out. When I look at it in greyscale (camera filter on my phone), the “Kind of a tree” green and “Definitely not a tree” orange are pretty close in value, but the borders make them easy to differentiate. Given that the goal was ostensibly to highlight the distribution of true trees, I think that’s entirely appropriate. And when I turn on my laptop’s blue blocker, I still have no problem seeing the difference between the categories.
When I showed the new graphic to my family, Partner suddenly started examining it and making connections. (“🧐 Look how closely related tea is to pitcher plants!”) And the 5yo was even trying to make sense of it! Neither of them seemed interested yesterday, so I’m declaring success!
First off, thanks for the reminder that thingspace can map very differently depending on which dimensions you choose to filter on! It’s difficult to really grok that idea in a sufficiently general way, I’ve noticed, and I feel like this was much more surprising that it should have been. I think reframing “tree” and “fish” as strategies may end up being an important takeaway.
Question: Apples not (botanically) a fruit how? Are they not the seed-bearing mature ovum of a plant? I feel like I missed something there.
Accessibility note: I totally might have started with the same colors you chose for your tree diagram! To my eye, they scream “woody thing” and “leafy thing” and “something like both”. But also, the yellow and the brown are nearly indistinguishable on my monitor with the blue-reducer turned on, and all three hues sit in the part of color-space that gets kinda muddy to folks with certain kinds of reduced-color vision. Possible adjustments: you could add a shape component to each node (e.g. rounded corners, lozenge, square corners, hexagons), use different border styles (e.g. thin, thick, dotted, double-lined), and/or choose colors with very different values if you want to keep those (admittedly information-rich) hues (e.g. pastel green (maybe with dark text), walnut brown (maybe with white text), mossy green (maybe the text has a border to make it stand out)). The goal is to be able to distinguish the differences easily in a grayscale rendering of the image.
Thank you so much!
Re: question: Well, they’re not “normal” fruits, at least—they’re accessory fruits. I don’t know much else about the botanical definitions other than that.
Also, the accessibility point is very much appreciated. I’ve updated the graphic to take that into account—would love your thoughts on the improved one? Either way, I very much appreciate both the raising-the-issue and the suggestions on improvements!
Not a “real” fruit because the flesh is a product of some tissue adjacent to the ovum instead of within it. That sounds oddly nit-picky to me, even for scientists. Do you think this might be an important distinction for some non-taxes reason, or are botanists just really pedantic sometimes?
Well done on the new graphic! It’s much easier to read now: I like the choice to use the darkest color and heaviest border for the “Definitely a tree” category, since that makes them pop out. When I look at it in greyscale (camera filter on my phone), the “Kind of a tree” green and “Definitely not a tree” orange are pretty close in value, but the borders make them easy to differentiate. Given that the goal was ostensibly to highlight the distribution of true trees, I think that’s entirely appropriate. And when I turn on my laptop’s blue blocker, I still have no problem seeing the difference between the categories.
When I showed the new graphic to my family, Partner suddenly started examining it and making connections. (“🧐 Look how closely related tea is to pitcher plants!”) And the 5yo was even trying to make sense of it! Neither of them seemed interested yesterday, so I’m declaring success!