Thanks for your comments. In consideration of the chart-averse people who might use it, I almost left out the scales and just had the marks for the specific foods and exercise types. This would have made the nomogram very simple visually. But the extra ability to mix and match exercise types and times to add to the total Calories tipped the scale in their favor. Adding a guideline is a great idea, and most nomograms have them. I have added them in a separate vector image editor before, and Pynomo’s next release is including this feature because as you say it’s so important.

Ron D.

My thoughts: I agree. If you put them back to back, then you get this: http://cid-f380a394764ef31f.sk.....ublic?uc=1

All I’ve done is unwind the original graph. I ran out of the inclination to show male vs female, but this would be easy enough to work in. I originally posted this (and most of the below comments) in the comments of Jon Peltier’s blog at
http://peltiertech.com/WordPre.....KXZ&D

VisioGuy: [The cave man graphic would clearly illustrate “Pizza make fat” and “Run make skinny.”]
Ritchielee: [I do like the idea of throwing certain popular foods into the mix though, as it gives a feel for day to day reality.]

My thoughts: I think the bad things are well covered by the ‘menu’ (*groan*) of choices of commonly consumed food items; but it would be good to have some healthy options too, so that people could see that eating better is as much an option as exercising more.

Ritchielee: I like what you’ve done with your chart. Parallel evolution with what Jon did over at his blog. Jon shrunk his chart in half by just showing half a pizza, given not too many people (except me) eat a whole one.

Ron D: That’s a great trick…reminds me of how we used to scale a line using a ruler back in technical drawing/drafting back in school when I was 15. Perhaps it would help if you also drew an example line on the chart to demonstrate how it works. I put an example on my chart at the above link for the same reason.

On both these examples, as I commented on Jon Peltier’s blog, these are great formats – especially for chart-savvy people (such as the average analyst, dietician, or scientist). But there’s a danger they might not be so informative for some less chart-savvy readers. If your intended audience was to be the readers of some non-technical glossy magazine or a sunday paper, then you’d have to account for the likelyhood of the majority of readers understanding it. These audiences would include many un-chart-savvy people who could struggle to make head or tails of these charts, or perhaps couldn’t be bothered exercising their brains, let alone their bodies.

But me…I really dig them!

which is my point.

the charts are going to tell you incorrect answers unless they take into account the right parameters, which I think are too hard for such charts.

so an infographic is not going to tell you the answer to the question.

it’s the wrong tool.

The technicalities of exactness can never work here, so we have to go for a general view somehow. someone running at 12mph for 30 minutes is going to burn more calories than at 8mph right?

On that chart, the big mac and fries requires about 2.5 hours walking and about 1.6 hours running. Walking is roughly 1.5 x running.

However using Metabolic Equivalents (METS) for a relative comparison, “walking” at various speeds is 2 to 8 METS while “running” at various speeds is 8 to 18 METS.

So I can much bigger or smaller than x1.5 …. then it matters what I weigh etc etc.

Different graph, same problem.