Category: Visualization

Amy Esselman re-designs a mess of a chart:

When faced with any unfamiliar but complicated graph, it can be helpful to think about it piece by piece to gain a better understanding of what’s being communicated. That way, we’ll have a better handle on how we can improve the overall visual. 

The goal of this chart is to allow managers to compare their store’s performance against its forecasted range and the actual performance of other stores in the region. 

Click through for the full process.

Steve Jones thinks about zero:

I’m not great at building charts and graphs. I can build a basic chart, but I often depend on the tooling I use to size, scale, etc. appropriately for whatever I’m graphing. That, or I just use a basic graph that starts from zero and has some sort of linear scale. Or I just present a table of numbers.

There are plenty of misleading charts, especially used by the media that want to show some particular aspect of data that suits the story they are reporting. Many of these misleading charts often don’t start at zero, and they end up scaling in a way that can confuse people.

Steve references a lengthy article on the topic, one which is definitely worth the read, especially because as far as I’m aware, most of the academic literature on visualization and starting at 0 ignores line charts. The only work I’m familiar with is Cleveland, McGill, and McGill, who recommended banking to 45 degrees (and here’s an example of it in SAS).

Elizabeth Ricks makes a point:

Today’s post is a tactical one: how to highlight a data point in Excel. 

When we craft visualizations for explanatory purposes—that is, when there’s a specific finding or recommendation that we want to communicate to someone specific—our goal is to drive action. In those cases,  our visuals should emphasize what’s interesting in the data and what requires attention. Highlighting key points in our graph is an important step in creating successful explanatory communications.

Read on for examples as well as how to do this.

Alex Velez notes one additional way that people may interpret your charts differently from your expectations:

Before I share some considerations for presenting data internationally, I want to acknowledge that I am not an expert on different cultures and audiences. In this post, I simply share some of my experiences with the hope that others will provide additional commentary for increased learning. If you have related thoughts, please share in the comments. 

Let’s consider five observations of regional differences I’ve encountered while communicating data.

Read on for those observations.