The NYT team just put up a fantastic visualization of the American Time Use Survey data, which purports to measure how the average American spends the time of a day.  (Apparently, thousands of people recalled what they did every minute of an average day.)  The amount of data collected is massive, and this graphic allows readers to explore the data in intuitive ways.

The chart shows for each minute of the day (horizontal axis) the proportion of people doing specific activities.  Not surprisingly, we spend more time sleeping than any other type of activity.  The axis and data labeling as well as gridlines are very restrained.

Normally, I am not a big fan of these proportional area charts because the only relevant dimension to look at is the vertical distance from one curve to the next but the focus on areas put equal weight on the horizontal and vertical distances.   The horizontal distance is meaningless, and thus the area is meaningless.

These designers found a solution to the problem, and good for them!  Because of the mouse-over effect, I could not save the a