vanishes in clouds of chartjunk; who would trust a chart that looks like a video game?"In a 1992 New York Times article, the reporter captures Holmes' response to Tufte's criticism:"Time's Nigel Holmes, creator of the diamonds graph, was understandably irked when Tufte criticized it. Holmes admits his work has sometimes been exaggerated, but feels that Tufte, in his insistence on absolute mathematical fidelity, remains trapped in ’the world of academia’ and insensitive to ’the world of commerce,’ with its need to grab an audience"This debate between Tufte and Holmes is emblematic of the tension between statistical and designerly approaches to visualization design. Debate over meaning The term chartjunk is an umbrella term that can be used to describe a variety of visual devices and has been referenced by different terms across research. Stephen Few, a data visualization practitioner and consultant at Perceptual Edge, stated that Tufte's original definition of chartjunk was "too loose" and that "by defining chartjunk too broadly, Tufte to some degree invited the heated controversy that has raged ever since." Robert Kosara, also a data visualization practitioner, researcher, and author of the blog EagerEyes, noted that not all chartjunk are the same, some are harmful (e.g. a busy background), others harmless (e.g. nice borders or pictures), and some even helpful (e.g. annotations). In a recent study by Parsons and Shukla, they interviewed data visualization designers and found that there is both a "corrective movement" in the design community to move away from minimalist design principles, but also, that designers had different definitions for what constitutes chartjunk. The authors felt that "better definitions are needed so that everyone has a shared understanding [about chartjunk]." Chartjunk in research The information visualization research community has researched the effects of chartjunk on how viewers interpret visualizations. There have been studies that found that chartjunk increases long-term memorability of the chart. A recent study found that chartjunk, in the form of semantically meaningful icons, increased accessibility of charts for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). See also Misleading graph Lexicographic information cost, in lexicography References Infographics 1980s neologisms Waste of resources