Comments on: Better Charts for Business: When Business Doesn’t Care

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 08:56:00 +0000

Peter: you will not see “that sort of content” in this site, except for this post. It is not gratuitous, it has a point. I’m sorry if you feel it is NSFW, but I will not remove it. I’ll add a NSFW warning.

By: Peter Robinson

Peter Robinson — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:18:00 +0000

I’m at work and went to the Illustration Purposes link, being presented with a semi naked girl. Would you please remove that sort of content from your site so we can actually read it in a work environment? Thankyou.

By: stat arb

stat arb — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 05:24:23 +0000

Oh gawd … can’t we just be honest with each other?

By: Are Good Charts, Well, Boring?

Are Good Charts, Well, Boring? — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:44:57 +0000

[...] business managers still associate fancy charts with serious decision-supporting tools. This is the right time to change. Eye-candy, “professional looking” charts are [...]

By: How Do You Sell an Excel Dashboard?

How Do You Sell an Excel Dashboard? — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:05:22 +0000

[...] news: they actually couldn’t care less. Let me be brutally honest: if you are an Excel expert, chances are you are at the bottom of the [...]

By: benjamin

benjamin — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:19:03 +0000

I loved your analysis, but I think you give middle management too much credit. The reason they don’t use fully interactive (or the Zen presentation approach) PowerPoint presentations is because they don’t know how. I am a business/data analyst and in my office it is bullet point hell, and it is because they don’t know any better and aren’t willing to sit down with a book on presenting, or go to a toastmasters class.

Also, I think this is one of the main reasons many business analyst still use terrible 3D charts and the like in their dashboards. They will spend much time building a model, but view the chart as almost an afterthought. If they use the more gaudy charts in their Xcelcius dashboards, it is most likely because a middle manager asked them to so that they can impress upper management.

Middle management doesn’t mind using stripped down charts because things move so fast that they only care about the numbers (ie. their jobs), and it is not because they love the ideas of Tufte.

I just have come to the conclusion that it is a rare employee that actively seeks out information (on their own) and tries to really master their subject area. Just this week I was talking with one our our IT guys and he was amazed that I knew SQL. When I told him I was now learning the Python programming language, he had no idea what I was talking about. Our IT guy didn’t know what Python was!!! Most people begrudginly come to work, take coffee breaks, and then go home to watch American Idol.

Sincerely,

Jaded

By: Data Visualization Personas

Data Visualization Personas — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 02:24:26 +0000

[...] must discuss how to add best practices in information visualization to the data management model. Selling this to top managers isn’t always easy. But Peter likes to bang his head on a [...]

By: teylyn

teylyn — Wed, 20 May 2009 21:42:49 +0000

Just before I read this excellent post, I looked at a Powerpoint presentation by Dave Prior, published on Gantthead.com. The presentation adresses how to use a new approach to software development (Scrum) in an organisation that will keep the traditional management style. The challenge is to present management with the information they need, even if the new development approach does not support the traditional reporting KPIs. The solution given in this presentation was a simple one. I had to bite my tongue to keep from crying out loud in our open plan office. The solution was:

Management likes pie.

Followed by hideous 3D pie charts that looked like the one you’re showing in the image of this post. The only positive was that they (mostly) did not present more than 4 data points in each pie… but still!

Sources: http://www.gantthead.com/video.cfm?ID=249216
presentation at http://www.gantthead.com/presentations/Scrum-in-the-Waterfall.html but requires subscription.

By: Christopher Berry

Christopher Berry — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:50:06 +0000

It depends on the goal.

If the goal is to communicate a finding to a senior audience, don’t dally – tell them damned finding, what happened, why it happened, and what to do next. If anybody questions the analyses, the charts, tables, and regressions can be found in the appendix. And trust me: senior people will look at appendices if you’re telling them something they don’t already know or suspect.

If the goal is to drone on for 55 minutes about pageviews this and unique visitors that and conversion this, AND ON AND ON AND ON – all without real why’s or hypothesis or actions or a decision point – to a senior audience: you can kill them with charts. Go ahead. Drown them.

You’re right about precision delivering a false sense of comfort. You’re bang on.

There are good infometrics best practices. Developing a dashboard is in many ways more complex than building a website. We do have design patterns in infometrics, however, not all design patterns work in all cultures.

If you’re going to present a chart – follow the best practices. Start the axes at 0. Use bars for nominal and ordinal data, lines for interval. Label the axes. Label the chart.

Many insights can be communicated very well with 2 well selected series on a chart.

By: Jorge Camoes

Jorge Camoes — Wed, 20 May 2009 12:45:32 +0000

@Bernard: Great comment, thanks. Obviously we have to have good data management (including data analysis and visualization) at all levels, and I don’t really believe in a middle management conspiracy to use good tools for their own analysis and eye-catching charts for reporting (but I do think that too many people have this misguided notion that you are able to impress with some canned effects).

That’s my experience too… When they are able to make comparisons people become aware of how relevant charts can be if used as a decision-supporting tool.

“my next personal crusade in France” and you are doing a great job, but more on that later…