Design

BuzzWordWatch: Sparkline

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SparklineSparkline (n.) A small, data-rich, word-sized graphic that can be inserted into text, and understood at a glance. Named by Edward Tufte, and explained in a chapter of his upcoming book, Beautiful Evidence.

Further reading: Great examples at the Information Aesthetics blog, where sparklines are used to visualize site stats, like daily visitors and even Google AdSense earnings (Thanks, Kottke, for that suggestion.) Tufte’s own examples are shown at right. Make your own with this simple sparkline builder. (Buzzword spotted, most recently, in a write-up from the ReBoot8 Conference in Copenhagen)