Subscribe
Effective Charts and Dashboards for Excel users

Data Visualization Blog

Memorable Charts? Forget About It!

This too much discussed paper “found that people’s accuracy in describing the embellished charts was no worse than for plain charts, and that their recall after a two-to-three week gap was significantly better. In addition, participants preferred the embellished charts“. OK, let’s take a deep breath. Apparently,

Read more

The Healing Power of Statistics

A week ago, my father underwent a risky surgery. The doctors weren’t sure if they should do it, given his old age, but we all agreed that letting the disease take its course was not an option. After a week, he seems to be recovering well. He

Read more

How Do You Sell an Excel Dashboard?

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

Read more

On the Brink of the Abyss You Don’t Want to Be Pushed

There are so many bad charts published every single day that redesigning some of them would be a full time job. Many are involuntarily funny. And there are some dangerous and stupid ones. I live in Portugal, a small country that only gets international press coverage when

Read more

No, Tufte’s Charts Are not Plain and Simple

A new data visualization research paper finds that chart junk does not harm accuracy and actually improves recall. The paper is an interesting read but, unfortunately, not for the right reasons. I’ll discuss the paper in an upcoming post. Today I just want to comment a sentence

Read more

Want to Improve Your Excel Skills? Learn Access

What if you love Excel for all the wrong reasons? What if its flexibility creates nothing more than a glorified mess? What if you start neglecting the skills that truly matter? Every formula in Excel is an accident waiting to happen. Sometimes, a parameter is missing, sometimes

Read more

I’m Leaving my Day Time Job

Yes, I’m leaving in May. Things (economy-wise) don’t look pretty, and leaving a steady job may seem unbearably self-indulgent. So, why I’m I doing this? Yes, I was unhappy, and yes, money is important too. But there’s something else. Tom says I have a mission. Well, I

Read more

New! Excel 2007 Dashboard Online Tutorial

OK, I’m very please to announce that ExcelCharts.com members area is now open and a new online Excel 2007 dashboard tutorial is available. Go ahead an open a free account: the first two modules are available there and more free stuff is coming soon. As promised, current

Read more

The Wow Factor: How to Use Charts to Impress Your Boss

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

Read more

Members Area Update

Regular readers know that I’m updating my Excel dashboard tutorial and making it available online in a protected area of excelcharts.com. In exchange for their feedback, current users will get free access to the updated tutorial for Excel 2003 and also to the new Excel 2007 version.

Read more
Page 5 of 18« First...34567...10...Last »

Latest Posts

What’s on Your Mind?

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

Your Message

3+2=?