I just downloaded Google Chrome, played a little and I must say I like it. It is very clean, so it goes well with my idea of information visualization. If I were a IE user I would probably make the switch, but for serious browsing you can’t beat Firefox+extensions. If a portable version is made … Read more
Do you type well? I mean, do your thoughts flow naturally through your fingers or, on the contrary, your (low) typing skills come between your thoughts and your writing? I don’t type fast enough, I look at the keyboard from time to time and I don’t follow some simple typing rules that would save me … Read more
I’ll be here for the next 15 days. Great beach, air temperature and water temperature around 25ºC (77ºF), perfect for everyone that hates hot weather and cold water (that would be me). Best of all, I’ll be able to use my mobile internet connection…
I’m a consensus kind of guy, I can’t help it. I always try to find the best parts of not-so-good things (a Curate’s egg syndrome?). Let me give you an example. One of the reasons why people like pie charts is because of its strong and familiar metaphor – it is part of our daily … Read more
One of the reasons why information visualization in business is so poor is because many managers are clueless about it. They really believe that a simple training course on Office tools is more than enough to create some nice 3D charts for a Powerpoint presentation (and they are right: that’s all they need, because that’s … Read more
You know how useful graphs can be to to find trends and patterns in the data. But you can also use them to detect some mistakes, something that is much more difficult to do with a table. Let me give you a real world example. Is there anything unusual in this time series, anything that … Read more
You can learn Excel and spend more time with the kids, but Ian comments that: I have found that I have ended up doing many things that other should have done – even if it took them longer. Being great at Excel slows promotion through management ranks – delegate and show what a manager you … Read more
Excel 2007 is useless. This was a shocking revelation when I tried to create the charts for last post (Chart Design: Abortion Ratios 1980-2003). It was my first serious attempt at using Excel 2007. I failed miserably and gave up. I had to do everything in Excel 2003 and then open the file in Excel … Read more
Source: U.S. Census Bureau (original Excel file). The abortion ratio is defined by the number of abortions per 1,000 abortions and live births. (Click to enlarge) Notes: 1. We know that information visualization is all about pattern detection. But often our design choices hide relevant patterns behind the obvious one(s). Take this panel, for instance. … Read more
Nathan asks us Can You Improve this Mediocre Statistical Graphic? Since there are only two series (two parties) with a obvious mirror effect, I would say it doesn’t make sense (from a chart economy point of view) to display both series. And since the 50% mark is relevant in election results, why shouldn’t we just … Read more