It surprised me. And it shouldn’t. You see, there is nothing wrong in using data for the sole purpose of creating aesthetically pleasing visual objects. On the other hand, if you want to make sense of the data, and communicate your findings, it’s easy to argue that effectiveness should be your primary goal. This is the general model. … Read more
Stephen Few and Alberto Cairo (Alberto is the host, that’s why he doesn’t say much) And now let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: –Behold! human beings living in a meeting room, which has a projector with a Powerpoint presentation always turned on; here they have been from … Read more
I’m an introvert, so it’s very easy for me to also be an uncompromising Marxist (the Groucho flavor), specially when it comes to club membership (I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member) but things changed since I discovered data visualization. I love it and love this loose … Read more
It saddens me to know that 23-year old Belgium girls are incapable of abstract reasoning, something that everyone in other parts of the world take for granted by the age of 12. That’s why we should praise Eurostat for its dumb-down, infographic-oriented approach to data dissemination. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you … Read more
Over the last few days I came across some really WTF visualizations from respected people and organizations here. They all share the international language of bad design, so I’m sure you don’t need to know Portuguese to (not) understand them. Público, a newspaper: The National Council of Education: Jorge Braga de Macedo, an economist: FFMS, a foundation who’s … Read more
We (datavis folks) like to believe that one of the key advantages of charts over tables is that charts are much better at providing context, displaying patterns and so on, while a tables “merely” gives you the exact value. Fortunately, life is not that simple. Many people dislike charts and a good table with the … Read more
From: CMO To: All Staff Re: Changes in internal data analysis and reporting Consistent with current efforts to streamline our operations, management team has decided to change the way the company analyses and communicates business data. Recent assessments made clear that we are using just a small fraction of the available data, many decisions are not supported … Read more
(…) On the top of the mountain was a plain. There stood an old stone house, and in front of the house lay a great fish-pond, but behind it was a dark forest. He saw neither men nor animals, everything was quiet; only the wind rustled among the trees, and the clouds moved by quite close above his head. … Read more
Dmitry asks: I face an issue that has nothing to do with Excel itself: human resistance. I showed a dashboard to my manager and he answered to me that my dashboard is too difficult for him and for top management and insisted to use simple XL-tables with lots of data. I’m a bit confused, why … Read more
You are in the middle of a presentation and your worst nightmare suddenly comes true: your boss yawns, and for the right reasons too: your presentation is dull, your charts are dull dull dull and you are boring your audience to tears. The solution? High impact charts that keep your audience glued to the screen. … Read more