I think this reading is very relevant today, because of the misrepresentation of data we often see in the news. As a designer I think that the term chartjunk can be understood several ways. It is obvious from the experiment in the text that the visual aids are helpful in understanding the message of the data, and are more impactful, however I feel that certian elements are necessary and some unnecessary. This is specially applicable to certain embellishments that hide the actual data being displayed, or tricks used to convince the layman of specific motives. For example, the area problem in statistics or when the x and y axes are not on the same scale, this can often dramatcize an event or emphasize the wrong message.