Chart types
We know how popular pie charts are in business presentations, but pie charts and infographics is a marriage made in heaven. Let me share with you 16 cool ideas to add pie charts to your next infographic. I’ll add a brief comment to tell you what makes each unique and link-worthy. Please note that these are simple … Read more
Well, here is my first chart in Tableau, finally! After publishing my experiments with population pyramids (using Excel), I thought I could try Tableau Public with the same dataset from the US Census Bureau. Here is the result. I never really played before with Tableau Public and it took my less than an hour to … Read more
I recently bought a pedometer to make sure I walk at least those recommended 10,000 steps a day. As you can see, there is a strong variation, and no meaningful pattern is emerging. Now that I’m blogging about it, I’m sure that will happen soon :). It’s commonly accepted that, when displaying a time series, … Read more
A year ago I wrote a post about the circumplex chart and how consulting firms use charts to increase their price tag. Not all charts, mind: only the ones that the average user don’t recognize from the Excel charts library. Funny enough, I got several messages from consultants asking how that chart was done. So, … Read more
Animated charts are overrated. If you are using Excel, try to design a better user experience through interaction, not animation.
Are Excel charts, and Excel in general, a commodity, with no competitive advantage? Only if you want it to. Why? Because a vast majority of users: Have the data analysis skills of a toddler (or less); Can’t go beyond chart defaults; Functions? They know how to click the SUM() button; Don’t know what a dynamic … Read more
Here are two ways to display a relatively large dataset, montly unemployment rates by state since 1976. The first one, above, is perfect to see the overall patterns, the range from the lowest to the highest, the outliers and the slopes. An interactive version would allow the user to highlight specific series. A small-multiple version … Read more
Nathan discusses this chart. He says: I know a lot of you don’t like bubbles in your viz, but this one works for me. Jon Peltier, in the comments, argues that: Sets of bars would have been more effective. Tim adds the definitive argument: “Always using bar charts is like always using missionary position. It … Read more
If you are a market researcher, and you want to make sure that you get more reliable results for a subgroup in a survey, what do you do? You must increase the overall sample size (and spend a lot of money), right? Actually, you don’t. You can oversample that group only, and then weight it … Read more
Textures. 3D. Pie charts. Primary colors. Trends hidden behind labels. Backgrounds. Pie charts again. Clear signs of a bad chart, right? Right. It is so easy to spot a badly designed chart that you can use a computer to do it. Don’t waste your time. Let’s stop discussing the obviously wrong and start discussing the … Read more