Seth Godin Is Getting It…

by Jorge

From time to time, Seth Godin comes to visit our little field of information visualization, and I’m pleased to note that he is learning…

Today’s post, “How to make graphs that work” is remarkably better than “The three laws of great graphs” or “How to make a PowerPoint chart”. Today he warns  us against Excel and PowerPoint defaults and templates, invites us to tell a story, by following some simple rules and braking some other rules. It’s clearly a post on the safer side…

But I do have some remarks. Godin says:

when you show me something exactly like something I’ve seen a hundred times before, what do you expect me to do? Here’s a hint: Zzzzzz.

Right. That’s the problem with defaults and templates. But it’s a problem with all defaults and templates, no matter how good they are. So, what can you do? First choice: be relentlessly creative. Can you do it? Good for you, I can’t. Second choice: make your charts invisible. Show the message, not the chart.

Pie charts are spectacularly overrated. If you want to show me that four out of five dentists prefer Trident and that we need to target the fifth one, show me a picture of 5 dentists, but make one of them stand out. I’ll remember that.

I actually prefer the Presentation Zen style. If you have two slices, you just need a percentage. And be careful with the pictures you choose. In this case, I see a female dentist that doesn’t prefer Trident on Wednesdays…

You can animate, but only if you have a note from your doctor.

You can animate if there is a pattern inside (Hans Rosling, anyone?).

So, what do you think? Is Seth Goding ready for serious information visualization?

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Are Excel Charts Hurting Your Business? 10 Mistakes You Should Avoid.

by Jorge

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 chart is;
  • Think pivot tables are too complex;
  • VBA? No way!

I believe you can squeeze some competitive advantage out from Excel if you avoid some basic mistakes everyone else makes. Here is a very short list (some generic, some chart-specific).

#1. Assuming that Excel Can Do It.

Because a spreadsheet is such a loose environment, people often assume that all things numeric can be done using Excel and that no specific skills are needed. Using Excel as a database tool is an obvious example. If you can’t stop singing Ode to Joy every time you see one million rows in Excel 2007 that’s a clear sign that you are on the wrong track.

#2. Assuming that Excel Can’t Do It.

Most people aren’t aware of how powerful Excel is and use it almost as a pocket calculator. If you routinely have to manage quantitative data, learning a little more always pays off. As an example, you can use it to create complex executive dashboards or, at least, as a dashboard prototyping tool.

#3. Not Having a Go-To Person.

Not everyone needs to be an expert, but having someone that understands the business and proactively tries  to find better ways to perform common (or not so common) tasks should be a requirement.

#4. The Excel Islands.

If you have a data source you can connect your sheet to, do it. Don’t make the mistake of copy / pasting the data into your sheet. That’s a bad practice and it can undermine your organization’s entire information system.

If you connect your spreadsheet to the data source (via ODBC, for example) you are ensuring the integrity of your data and minimizing maintenance costs. If you are creating a new table, use a simple database tool like Access. And if you really, really, need to use Excel, make sure you create a table that can easily be exported and used by a different tool.

#5. The Uncharted Archipelago of Excel Workbooks.

Search for “book*.xls” in your hard drive. How many do you find? Get rid of all those useless files now.

#6. Bypassing IT.

We all have our little fights with IT, but we must understand their role and the reasons behind their actions sometimes make sense… Excel users often lack knowledge to understand data structures, data access, documentation, security (IT 101, basically). If your IT don’t want to conquer the world and actually helps users, you should work hand in hand with them.

#7. Not Using VBA.

I’m sorry to break this to you, but if you spend your time analyzing data and Excel is your primary tool, then you must use VBA. I’m not telling you should be a programmer, far from it. But you should be able to record a macro and make some simple tweaks. There are many repetitive tasks that can easily done using three lines of code.

#8. Excel is the only charting tool.

There are no neutral tools. They force upon you a certain way of doing things that you may not be comfortable with (or you shouldn’t). The Chart Wizard is one of the stupidest wizards I’ve ever met. If you need to spend time removing defaults there is something wrong with the defaults. Excel charts emphasize:

  • Stupid Defaults versus Cleaner Formatting Options
  • Static versus Dynamic
  • Marketing versus Insights
  • Disposable versus Reusable
  • One versus Multiple
  • Large versus Small
  • Island versus Continent
  • Presentation versus Discovery

I’ll detail this in a future post but, like PowerPoint, Excel charts do have their own cognitive style. If you want to do things differently you can, but you are choosing a path of endless pain. So, give some users the option to use a different charting tool or, as a bare minimum, use a better wizard.

#9. Forgetting the 3R’s.

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Yes, I’m talking about Excel charts. How many disposable charts are cluttering your hard disk? Go green when creating your charts:

  • Charts are typically much larger than needed, so you can safely reduce their size;
  • When you create a chart make sure that it can be reused when the data updates;
  • A chart for Market A is probably very similar to a chart for Market B. By recycling the chart from market to market you don’t need do create new charts and pollute your hard drive.

#10. Not Making Things To Work Together

Lists like this one are useless, unless you know how the basic system works. Try to see the big picture and it will be much easier to understand where each piece belongs to:

  • If a function needs a range address, you will know that another function can provide the address (first step to create dynamic charts);
  • If you are repeating the same stupid task, you’ll find a way to automate it;
  • etc.

Bottom line: make sure you know what you should use Excel for, find inefficiencies and give power users the option to use specialized tools.

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Charts: Monthly Unemployment Rates by State 1976-2009

by Jorge

Here are two ways to display a relatively large dataset, montly unemployment rates by state since 1976. The first one 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 allows the user to focus on specific states, compare them to the normal band, etc. States are ranked by labor force size and, as you can see, in the first row seven out of ten are above the US average in April. In the last row, only one is above the US average. You can also see that Michigan was not well (unemployment-wise) long before the current crisis, or a spike in Luisiana (Katrina). It pays to study this chart carefully.

Bottom line: try to see the same data from different angles. There will always be semething interesting to find.

What do you think? How would you improve these charts? Would you use a different display? Share it in the comments! (here is the data file)

Update: I usually stay away from Excel’s surface charts, but I’d like to add this one:

Also check Michael’s Horizon chart.

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Just Another Stupid Bar Chart

by Jorge

stupid-bar-chart

Human creativity is virtually limitless. But:

  • You don’t vary color by data point.
  • You don’t force the eyes to a pendular movement if you can avoid it.
  • You don’t use a legend when you can use axis labels.
  • You can’t have a residual category that large.

Bloggers don’t seem to learn, even with a good teacher.

(Bar chart published in the ReadWriteWeb)

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Will you Help Me Write a Data Visualization E-Book (and Win a Free Copy)?

by Jorge

I’m writing an e-book, kind of “101 Data Visualization Questions You Were Afraid to Ask”, and I’d really appreciate your help. You just have to submit your data visualization question(s) using the contact form on the right (feel free to add additional suggestions or comments). The best 101 messages win a free copy of the e-book. And there may be some surprise prizes for the best 10.

You can submit your messages until June 30. There are no specific guidelines because I’m trying to avoid my own bias. You can ask basic questions or be as creative and as challenging as you like.

This goes beyond the e-book. It’s a great opportunity for me to get feedback from you and shape the blog to your needs. So, go ahead and ask a question!

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Better Charts for Business: When Business Doesn’t Care

by Jorge

business doesnt careMost managers don’t care about a better visualization of business data. As a reader puts it:

Short of locking management in a room with Tufte and Few, how do I sell management on the value of seeing things differently?

Instead of trying to sell, let’s see why the aren’t buying. Here are some reasons.

Good Charts Are For Middle-Management

Making sense of a large amount of data is a task for the middle management, while senior management only needs a couple of carefully chosen KPI.

I suspect that some middle managers secretly use good dashboards, dynamic charts, the works. If they are doing a good job, their reports for the senior management are filtering out all the less relevant data and now they can focus on what is important: making a good impression. That’s why middle managers use charts for illustration purposes only, and PowerPoint (low resolution, animation effects, 3D and textures) is the perfect tool.

This is also why top managers don’t really care about charts. They like to see some color in a report, but little knowledge (or none at all) derives from the charts. Each new 3D chart reinforces their perception that charts are pretty but fundamentally useless in the decision-making process.

This is a gross simplification, naturally. I just want to emphasize that:

  • impression management should be taken into account when discussing real-world business visualization;
  • upper managers need less (but more focused/filtered) data than middle managers;
  • upper management can hardly evaluate the role of charts because they don’t use them in their decision making processes.

I strongly believe that interaction is a critical feature when creating charts and dashboards, but top management needs answers, not tools to explore the data. When designing an executive dashboard you must know who will use it, and how. Middle managers will be please to know that they can select different competitors from a list, but top managers want you to tell them who the competition is. Corolary: know your users.

Show me the Numbers

A piece of advise: display a label like “12,893,239.873″ on the top of a column in a column chart and your managers will sleep much better. To you, it may seem a useless precision. To them, it brings a priceless sense of security and “being in control”. Tip: try to find the optimal rounding digit that makes your manager look more relaxed (extra points is he/she starts to levitate).

Seriously, a chart is not a table, and it shouldn’t be treated as one (this is one of many misconceptions about charts). But you can display the exact value of some relevant data points, provided it doesn’t interfere with the patterns. If that’s not possible, add a table below the chart or, better yet, link the chart to the underlying table. With a little VBA you can use a “mouse over” event in PowerPoint to show/hide the table.

Iliterate Inertia

Let’s face it: most people are unaware of our little knowledge field of information visualization. They don’t learn about it in school, they have a bad addiction to the wrong role models (the media), they are exposed on a daily basis to ugly and stupid defaults (in Excel and PowerPoint) and corporate culture isn’t helpful. Neither inertia.

So, do you have a better answer? Please share it in the comments.

Photo credit: Serena TH

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Inconsequential Foreplay

by Jorge

stresstest

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 might be more practical, but it gets boring!”

OK, let’s see. I have nothing against bubbles, there is a good level of interaction, and the chart looks clean and professional.

And yet, something is missing. I like interactive charts, but I’m lazy. I love a chart that shares a story with me and invites me to touch and manipulate and find more and more. When you open this chart there is nothing interesting to see, and if you force it to speak, well, it just… bubbles.

Tim’s comment is fun, but not very accurate. I will not detail my own preferences regarding positions but, unlike data visualization, getting the job done quickly by maximizing efficiency is not exactly my number one priority.

You can/should be creative, but at some point you must decide if you want to know how far down the rabbit hole goes. If not, it’s just inconsequential foreplay. Nice, but not enough.

I have to agree with missionary Jon on this one…

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Excel Charts: If It Isn’t Broken…

by Jorge

I humbly accept our business visualization reality: 90% of all business charts are created in Excel and most business users are unwilling to learn yet another application and go through all sorts of hassles (data management, compatibility issues, file sharing) just because a different product offers a bigger chart gallery and some obscure defaults no one cares about (except the experts).

You don’t take driving lessons in a Ferrari, specially if you don’t know the difference between a Ferrari and a Fiat. Why would you want Tableau or Spotfire if all you want and need is a pie chart?

If we want to make users more curious about the way they use their data, if we want to persuade them that 3D charts are useless, if we want them to adopt what we believe to be information visualization best practices, we must start with the application the users are familiar with.

It would be great to have a better tool in every computer, but we don’t have it. What we can do is to undermine it from inside, by educating the users and showing them how mediocre the tool is.

If done right, this should be visible in market surveys, sooner or later. And Microsoft will react to that, hopefully. There is no other way.

Leaving the Excel Flatland

That said, we can agree that Excel’s chart gallery is notoriously poor, defaults and options a nightmare, and the implementation of advanced visualization techniques a pain in the ass. And while you can argue that most new chart formats are outperformed by traditional ones (and a large majority is) you cannot assume that the plain ol’ bar chart will be here forever. We are using XVIII century visualization tools to display XXI century data. Things change very slowly indeed.

We cannot understand information visualization if our worldview is framed by the Excel chart gallery. Yes, we can recreate in Excel some formats that we see in other applications, but something is always lost in translation. Like in this song:

Brilha, brilha lá no céu
a estrelinha que nasceu.

You may know it as:

Twinkle, twinkle little star
how I wonder what you are.

The music is the same, but the user experience is much different (specially if the user doesn’t know Portuguese…).

R

Kelly O’Day over at ProcessTrends if offering the Learn R Toolkit, target at Excel users. I’ve just bought it. Why?

  • Because I like the idea;
  • Because I’m curious about creating charts using a programming language;
  • Because it’s not easy to create this in Excel, no matter how hard Jon tries :) .

Now, let me be frank. I don’t believe that regular Excel users would want to use R. If recording simple macros are outside their comfort zone, an application that requires programming even to create a basic chart is clearly out of limits.

R seems to require a lot of programming to create more advanced charts. Surely you can create a bar chart with three lines of code, but that’s the equivalent of

print "Hello World!"

Not very useful, but I’m sure Kelly’s Toolkit will encourage me to explore and break some handcuffs.

I don’t want to write a blog about Excel charts. I just want to write about making sense of business data. The tool shouldn’t matter (but it does).

__________________

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Here's How the Unemployment Rate Sounds Like

by Jorge

Do you want to know how the unemployment rate sounds like? Copy this string:

65536,32768,16384,16384,16384,4096,

4096,2048,1024,1024,256,128,64,16,4,2

and paste it into here (right-click, past).

Now the Dow Jones Index:

2,4,4,2,2,32,32,16,64,1024,2048,4096,

16384,65536,32768,16384

All together now:

65538,32772,16388,16386,16386,

4128,4128,2064,1088,1024,2304,

4224,16448,65552,32772,16386

This is fun.

(Big gloomy smile.)

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God and Moses? The Differences Between Edward Tufte and Stephen Few

by Jorge

I have a confession to make: my past is paved with chart-making sins, including some capital ones (yes, 3D pie charts, too). But years ago I saw the light in Edward Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information and since then I’ve been avoiding eye-candy temptations. Now I do my best to pursuit the path of data visualization virtue.

Every God Has His Moses: Edward Tufte and Stephen Few

Some time after that first revelation, I stumbled on Stephen Few’s Show Me the Numbers and I though: “wow, Tufte for business!”. As a father of twins, I know that good things come in pairs, and now I had two great role models to help my recent conversion.

Or should I say one and a half?

Edward Tufte and Stephen Few are often cited together, as if they were a single entity. For many of us, simple mortals, Stephen Few is some kind of translator of God’s voice. Given Few’s background, that wouldn’t be completely inappropriate…

For some time that’s how I looked at Few’s work on charts and data visualization. But I was wrong. They do share similar views about basic data visualization principles. And they seem to share the same level of stubbornness, too. But there is a major difference.

Tufte, the Artist vs. Few, the Engineer

Tufte is an artist. His data visualization principles derive from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s minimalism, and in that sense, he approaches charts from an aesthetic point of view. His charts are as beautiful as a chart can be, if you happen to like the aesthetic minimalism.

I don’t know how and when Few became aware of the need for better data visualization. But he embraced Tufte’s principles not because he is an aesthete like Tufte, but because he values efficiency and those principles happen to improve it.

Stephen Few would never title a book “Beautiful Evidence”. He doesn’t mind to use Excel to create his chart examples, while Tufte needs full control of details like kerning (and he uses a designer’s tool, Adobe’s Illustrator).

On the other hand, Tufte would never write a book about dashboards (Beautiful Dashboards? brrrr…). From an actionable, business visualization point of view, Tufte is The Visual Display… Almost everything else is beautiful, yes, and perfect for the coffee table.

And while Tufte escaped Flatland for good, Few still keeps both feet firmly on the ground, discussing BI tools, pie charts or irregular time series (and I don’t think his new book changes that).

The Need for a New Business Visualization Model: the Emotional Link

Both approaches are very consistent and they give you a set of guidelines that you can apply to all your charts and adopt as a general framework.

What I am not comfortable with is their positivist attitude, specially in Few. Because Tufte’s charts are aesthetically pleasing, we can derive some emotion from that. In Few’s case, his charts are purely functional.

I still don’t know where to draw the line between purely rational/functional visualizations and the eye-candy. Let’s see this pattern:

Boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back.

Do you feel emotionally overwhelmed? No? Do you even care about the story? Do you even care about the boy and the girl? Let’s try again:

John fell in love with Anna the moment she spilled coffee on his shirt.

This sounds much more interesting. Add three more sentences and you’ll complete the boy-meets-girl pattern. Both versions share the same pattern, but the second one adds some (perhaps irrelevant) detail and creates an emotional link between the audience and the characters.

You need that in data visualization, too. You don’t have to cry because you chart shows a market share drop in Alaska, but you must connect with the reality behind the chart and the data.

The Need for a New Business Visualization Model: Interaction

Jacques Bertin says that knowledge is built by the user when interacting with the chart. Why interaction (and animation) is absent from Tufte’s and Few’s books is something I don’t really understand.

Although I respect Tufte and Few, I feel that there are pieces missing in their theories. We can borrow some pieces from Bertin’s work (and Tukey’s?) and that will surely help, but the real issue here is to find the balance between the need to correctly (bureaucratically?) display the data and the emotional response that helps to keep the audience interested.

Back to you, a very simple question: what are Tufte and/or few missing? What pieces do we need for a XXI century visualization?

Photo credits: ~L. and David Zellaby.

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