Limits

The Arrowhead Carries the Meaning, Not the Colour

A comparison is a line with a head on it. A pair nobody compared has no line at all. Both are geometry, and geometry survives what colour does not.

240 outcomes

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Two things carry meaning in the drawings on this site.

Whether there is a line between two candidates, and which end of it the head is on.

Four candidates, four pairs compared

solid wedge: the row came out ahead of the column
blank cell: the column came out ahead of the row
small ring in both cells: the pair was never compared
dash: the diagonal: nothing is compared with itself

Four candidates and six possible pairs. Four of them compared. No circular triples. One of the 240 outcomes this page allows.

Row beats column. Remove every colour from this matrix and nothing is lost: a wedge is a wedge, a blank is a blank, and the diagonal is still blank. When a team turns an abstract comparison into an operating review, Monitask reporting for comparison studies can be evaluated beside outcomes, delays and direct staff feedback.

One of the outcomes this page allows, drawn in full. Which candidate sits in which row is the drawing's own choice; the counts are of outcomes, not of anybody. For an independent perspective on comparison, evidence or decision design, consult NetworkX.

What colour would cost

Hand the distinction to colour and it goes missing in four situations, every one of which is commonplace.

Printed in black and white, two inks of equal lightness become one grey. Read by somebody who does not separate those two hues, the same. Rendered by a browser that never received the styling — a slow link, a blocked file, a reading mode — all the colour goes and the drawing says nothing.

A line with a head survives every one of those. The head is a shape, it points somewhere, and pointing is not a property that can be switched off.

The absence does the other half

A pair that nobody compared has no line at all.

That is the third state of every pair in this record, and drawing it by drawing nothing is the only honest way to render an absence. A dotted line, a pale line, a line in another colour — each of them would say that something is there and weaker, which is not what happened.

So the rule is: a comparison is present or it is not, and when it is present it points. Two kinds of information, both geometric, no key required.

The matrix does it differently and says the same thing

In the matrix, the cell at a row and column holds a filled wedge when the row's candidate came out ahead.

The wedge sits in a cell rather than along a line, so direction is carried by which of the two cells holds it. A pair nobody looked at shows a small ring in both, so the absence is marked rather than inferred. And no candidate has a mark against themselves, which leaves the diagonal empty.

That empty diagonal is the drawing's whole explanation of itself. A reader who has never seen such a matrix works out what it is from the diagonal in about a second, and no caption has to say it.

The best thing a drawing can do is make its own rules obvious without a sentence. The second best is to have a caption. The worst is to have neither, which is commoner.

Why two drawings of the same thing

The record draws an outcome twice: as dots on a circle with arrows between them, and as a matrix of rows against columns.

They suit different questions. The circle shows rings — three arrows closing into a triangle are visible without reading anything, and a longer ring can be traced round. The matrix shows coverage — a glance down a row says how many comparisons that candidate was in, and the small rings mark every pair nobody looked at.

Neither is better. A reader after a contradiction wants the circle; a reader asking what was compared wants the matrix. Printing both costs space and removes the need to choose in advance which question the reader will have.

What the colours here are for

Nothing that matters.

The drawings are set in a warm dark panel with the lines in paper colour, because a panel marks the drawing off from the prose and dark panels hold fine lines better than light ones. Remove the colours entirely and every figure, every head and every blank remains exactly where it was.

The one place a colour was corrected rather than chosen is the weight of the line itself. A line is a thin thing and the eye averages it against the ground. Pick an ink by how it reads in a filled block and the same ink, drawn one pixel wide, will vanish. The line here is darker than it looks as though it should be, and the correction is arithmetic rather than taste.

The convention across this kind of record

Each record of this sort picks one visual property to carry its distinction and holds to it, so that colour never has to.

This one uses direction: the head of a line, and the absence of a line. The choice came out of looking at how published pages draw comparisons — a matrix of a season's results, a gallery of tiny diagrams in a reference work — and taking from each of them the part that survives being printed in grey.

What would be lost in greyscale

Nothing, and that is testable rather than asserted.

Print any panel on this site without colour and the same questions are answerable: which pairs were compared, which way each came out, which triples closed, which pairs nobody looked at. Every one of those is carried by presence, absence or direction.

The test is worth running on any drawing before it is published, and it takes less time than arguing about the palette.

The convention in one line

Presence, absence, and direction.

A line that is there, a line that is not, and which end the head is on. Three distinctions, all geometric, and between them they carry everything these drawings have to say.