Here's a graph that shows totals for the year and has Obama's included. The 3Q numbers are from the most recent totals within this thread and have NOT been verified yet but I'll update this image at it's location as soon as I receive the official count. The 2Q amounts are taken from a segment on RT, see screenshots at
http://RonPaulRonPaul.com below this image. It's late and I'm way past tired so if I missed something or made any major F ups please let me know.
Sorry but this graph (and the others like it) are VERY confusing. From a mathematical perspective, the visual elements combine aspects of two different types of visual display of numerical data. I'm not a professional mathemetician so maybe someone here can explain it better.
1. By convention, the 'stacking' technique is normally used to show things added together. Imagine a bar chart showing 1 yellow square at the bottom, 4 red squares next, and 2 blue squares at the top to convey that 7 units were donated. Most people look at that and think that yellow got one unit, red got four units, and blue got two units for a total of seven. But the chart tries to use that technique to suggest that blue got seven, red got five, and yellow got one. It just doesn't work.
2. Coloring in the area underneath the line is inaccurate because it wrongly implies that the "area" of the color is what is important when in fact it is the height. This contributes to the confusion and inaccuracy because the visible area of red is much larger than the visible area of blue.
3. I suggest that Ron Paul's color should be red as he is the Republican; Obama should be blue as the Democrat; and the others can be whatever. The convention has been established that red=Republican and I suggest you should stick with that.
Normally in displaying numerical data, one chooses either area, or a line.
So one alternate method might be to stack each candidate's own numbers in a separate vertical bar, with slightly different colors for Q2 and Q3. This would then show both the individual quarter numbers and the total.
Another alternate method might be to use nested concentric pie charts. The central one could show Q2 numbers and then the bigger one the Q3 numbers. Call the total Q2 donations TQ2 & the total Q3 donations TQ3, with the radius of the central pie chart being r, and the bigger pie's radius being R. The formula for R is:
R = square root ((TQ3/TQ2) x r squared)
This would make the visible colored areas proportional to the donation totals for each candidate.
A third alternate method might be to revise the stacked chart you've done but put Ron Paul's full amount above and over Obama's numbers so that Ron Paul's area would be more than twice as large as Obama's area. This would technically be inaccurate regarding the areas, but it would more clearly convey the truth that Ron Paul gets way more donations.
