Visualization of quantitative data -- bad examples

I'm a big fan of and RSS subscriber to Smashing Magazine -- they have some great articles on design, and I always find myself reading all the way through most of their posts.  With that said, I have to voice my disappointed in their recent article on chart and graph generators.  It's probably not even their fault really -- I applaud the hard work they did on pulling together a bunch of Flash, AJAX and CSS based chart generators that are available online.  But the fact is that most of these tools are completely useless unless you know how to visualize data properly, and that is, sadly, a skill that is not taught enough.

All of these tools create pretty flashy charts, that’s for sure, but does it really help to tell the story of the data?  Why would you ever need a donut chart or a 3D stacked cylinder chart?  What does that add to the data that a simple 2D bar chart can’t show you?

If you're not familiar with Edward Tufte's work, you should definitely check it out.  He coined the term "data-ink ratio", in which he argues, to quote from Wikipedia, "against the inclusion of any non-informative decoration in visual presentations of quantitative information and claims that ink should only be used to convey significant data and aid in its interpretation."  Below are some examples, from the Smashing Magazine article, of how "non-data ink" is so overbearing that it completely overshadows the data:

There are so many things wrong with these charts, but let me just point out the 3 main issues really briefly:

• Unnecessary usage of area.  The eye is not good at comparing the relative sizes of areas.  On the first graph, can you easily tell if France or Canada is bigger?  We are good at comparing lengths though, which is why bar charts are almost always a better option than pie charts.  (And by the way, what on earth is the hole for on that first chart?).
• Unnecessary and incorrect usage of color.  In the first chart, different colors are assigned to each country.  Since this should have been a bar chart and not a pie chart (as per my first point), different colors aren't needed, and just adds non-data ink to the graph.  If you're going to use color, then don't use highly saturated colors as in these graphs -- it's uneasy on the eyes and in many cases indistinguishable to people who are color blind.
• Unnecessary usage of 3D.  3D effects should just never be used, period.  It clutters up the charts, and also often results in occlusion -- where some data points are hidden behind others.

We need to teach analysts the techniques to create simple and straight-forward charts that let the data shine through.  All these primary colors and 3D stuff have nothing to do with the data.  A great resource on this is Stephen Few's book Show Me The Numbers -- I highly recommended his book to anyone who spends any time making charts for business presentations.  Ok.  I'm glad I got that off my chest...