Posts tagged as:

charts

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

by Jorge

CarnivalYou 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.

What Are High Impact Charts?

High impact, professional-looking charts are designed to impress your audience. Hit ‘em right between the eyes and they’ll keep coming back for more! If you want to create successful high impact charts you should make sure they share some or all of these characteristics:

  • Real life-like objects: people love the sense of “concreteness” you can get from a well-rendered 3D chart;
  • Animation: if you really want to grab the attention of your audience, animation is your safest bet. Use it to add suspense or dramatic effects (you can do this easily using PowerPoint);
  • Hyperlinks: add some hyperlinks to your charts and/or PowerPoint presentations (for example, add a link to a pie chart slice to jump to a detail chart); people love this kind of sophistication!
  • Strong colors: your audience uses bright reads and yellows and greens all the time. They are expecting nothing less;
  • Go to the point: the message should be clear and simple. Don’t add irrelevant details or details that suggest a different answer;
  • Don’t-make-me-think charts: all charts your audience may not be familiar with (like scatter plots) are off limits;
  • Don’t overdo: often people don’t know where to stop: a 3D pie chart with a single slice exploded is fine; if you explode them all, that’s just stupid.

What you Shouldn’t Do

You’ll want to appear sophisticated, you should avoid:

  • Office 2003 Charts: 3D charts in Office 2003 (Excel and PowerPoint) are badly rendered and chart defaults are ugly. Use Office 2007 or try to make your charts using a free online tool;
  • Clipart and background images: While it is perfectly acceptable (and recommended) to use clipart and background images to keep the attention of your audience, please make sure they are a) send the right emotional message and b) reveal your good taste; try to find suitable images in Flickr or Istockphoto;
  • 3D line charts: While 3D bar and pie charts look great, the more abstract nature of line charts make them unsuitable for 3D effects. Use drop shadows instead.
  • Too many charts in a single slide: Stick to one single idea and make your chart big enough to make sure it impacts even the farthest person in the room;
  • Don’t be excessively consistent. Establish a pattern and be consistent, but add some randomness to force people to keep paying attention. A good place to try this is slide transition.

This is not Data Visualization

OK, before regular readers unsubscribe en masse after reading this post, let me add some notes:

  • Solid data management and visualization principles result in an understanding of your data that goes much beyond the simple illustration of some random key indicators;
  • Most managers don’t really care about data visualization because of their own low literacy rate;
  • However, merit is defined by them, based on their biased knowledge;
  • If you want to climb the corporate ladder, what you do must be aligned with their merit criteria, and the way you design and present your data is no exception;
  • The more you know about data visualization the more options you have. Your persona will be defined by what you know and choose to show, not because you don’t know any better.

So, if your next presentation includes an exploded, 3D, flying pie chart, make sure ignorance is not the reason behind it.

There is an unmistakable tension between what data visualization experts preach and corporate practices. How can we find the right balance between a “purity” that takes you nowhere and a practice that makes you cringe? Share your thoughts in the comments…

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Stephen Few, Data Visualization, Eye Candy and the Pie

by Jorge

Stephen Few left a comment in my post “Is Data Visualization Useful? You’ll Have to Prove it“. We all have much to learn with Steve, so instead of leaving the discussion buried in an old post, I thought it would be interesting to make it more visible. Please read the comment then come here and join the discussion. Here is my answer.

Steve, sorry if I sound provocative, that’s not my intention. You are the leading expert in data visualization for business, you are doing a remarkable work with your books, with your blog, with your forum, with your patience to answer posts like mine. I have to be  thankful for that. And I do agree with 95% of what you write. But you don’t want to be surrounded by people who fully agree with you, do you?

The Effectiveness of Data Visualization

You say “the effectiveness of data visualization is well established by a large body of empirical evidence”. I want to believe that too. However in this study Jarvenpaa writes:

“Graphical charts are generally thought to be a superior reporting technique compared to more traditional tabular representations in organizational decision making. The experimental literature, however, demonstrates only partial support for this hypothesis.”

And J.-A. Mayer adds:

“This study refutes the general superiority of visual information in improving the decision quality (‘naive superiority hypothesis’). The choice and design of visual presentation is determined by information structure, decision environment, the decision-maker and the task decision. (…) The successful use of visual information depends substantially on its acceptance by the manager and the environment.”

What do these authors tell us? First, we cannot be 100% sure about the effectiveness of data visualization. Second, there are many other variables at play. And third, managers must accept it. This is a critical factor. Managers love impression management, and making a good impression using the dreaded “professional-looking charts” is the path of least resistance.

Data Visualization Success Stories

I have no doubts that you could share with us many success stories. When I write about an “admission of impotence” I am not questioning your ability to create/lead/mentor successful data visualization projects. But if you want to use those projects to inspire the average person I think you’ll fail most of the time, unfortunately.

Let me tell you how the layman looks like in my part of the world. He makes charts like this:

He believes that a 3D pie chart “looks more precise” and he doesn’t know that Excel chart defaults can be changed (more advanced laymen are able to switch to more “impactful” colors like reds, yellows and bright greens). In my part of the world, a layman doesn’t even know what “data visualization” is about (and they don’t even care). (Here are some more profiles.)

If you are preaching to the choir your conversion rate may be high. But the layman is not easily impressed. You must convert one at a time, and that’s something many of us can’t afford. Can you? He’ll keep making those pie charts because that’s what his manager requires him to do, he doesn’t know better, he’s lazy or you fail to convince him of a causality effect between better charts and better results.

The Layman Must Like Your Charts

In a business environment, charts don’t have to be memorable, only results do. But if you want to change behaviors, your audience must like the new behavior and accept the unavoidable pain. Likable charts help conversion.

You say “I do not discount people’s emotions”. I don’t see it, I’m sorry. The way I see it, you sacrifice everything to the altar of “chart effectiveness”. I don’t find a single one of your charts where the use of color is not purely functional. You say “you should support your claim with concrete examples”. I do have lots of examples: all your charts!

Let me reemphasized this: I agree with you. Chart effectiveness is what we should aim at. But I’m part of the choir. I’m not the layman. I don’t use pie charts.

Pie Charts Again

Unlike most people, I don’t think pie chart addiction is a disease. It is a symptom of a much more serious problem: low numeracy and poor data management skills. Address this problem and pie charts will virtually disappear.

How do you address this problem? “I don’t use pie charts, and I strongly recommend that you abandon them as well.” Researchers like Ian Spence and Stephen Kosslyn don’t think pie charts are as bad as you paint them. Even if they are, it’s very hard to talk people out of an addiction with purely rational arguments.

Perhaps this is my European soul speaking, but I do prefer a gradual approach (“this is acceptable, for the time being”) whereby people (hopefully) start to develop a sensibility to the perceptual issues.

By the way, how come we keep telling people that charts are about trends and patterns, not about the precise figures and then we argue that pie charts are bad because we can’t tell the difference between a 13% slice and a 14% slice? It doesn’t make sense (I’m exaggerating).

We must find more compelling arguments. I don’t like pie charts just because they are a waste of space (low data density) and can only answer very basic questions, better answered using a table. These arguments are good enough for me. I don’t care if we humans are bad at calculating areas and angles. That’s an academic argument that is irrelevant in the real world (I’m being provocative now…).

To Sum Up

You have  a very consistent approach to data visualization and you practice what you preach. You believe that you can convince people using rational arguments.

Mine is a much more comfortable place. I know that eye-candy is a can of worms that shouldn’t be opened. I know that we should protect the layman from himself. I know that simple rules with no exceptions work better than complex rules no one bothers to learn or understand.

But I like the gray areas. I like to protect the poor and the oppressed pies and I try to find their small role in the world of data visualization. The same with eye-candy. The same with emotions. The right amount can get your foot in the door. What is “the right amount”? I don’t know. I’m still searching.

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Spiffy Charts

by Jorge

Regular readers know that English is not my mother language , but are kind enough to forgive me for my many mistakes.

I am always willing to learn. Today, while researching for an upcoming post, I came across an expression  I never heard before: “spiffy charts”. I felt in love with “spiffy charts” the moment I read it. And I read it straight from the horse’s mouth (I mean Microsoft).

If you don’t know how to make a chart and are keen to preserve that blissful ignorance, I highly recommend Microsoft Office Online Training, specially the module Create a professional looking chart (regular readers also know how I love “professional-looking charts“). You’ll learn how to “customize your charts to make them more attractive, memorable, and effective“. This means useless charts.

So, let’s see how to turn a humdrum (this is a new word, too…) chart into a spiffy one. First, to declutter your chart remove grid lines:

Ugly Excel bar charts

As you know, grid lines are useless, specially if you don’t care about the data. I would remove the gray background and the border around the legend. And I’d give the chart a more descriptive title to tell the users what they are seeing, but that’s my personal taste.

Then you should remove the y-axis and add labels to each column, further “decluttering” the chart. At this point the readers start sighing for a nicely designed chart table.

Ugly Excel bar charts

Want to give your chart a little more “flair” and make them more “professional-looking”? Just add a gradient fill and a subtle shadow:

Ugly Excel bar charts

Now comes the spiffy part. Imagine that you have a 3D column chart with two series, and one obscures the other. What do you do? No, you can’t remove the stupid 3D effect (remember: you want to make t spiffy chart, not a humdrum one). Well, all you have to do is to change the order of the series:

Ugly Excel 3D bar charts

Much better now, don’t you think? They accept that 3D charts “can be more attractive, but sometimes more difficult to read accurately” (surprise, surprise!). Apparently that’s a detail in the grand scheme of things. You are excused from making accurate charts if you are making professional-looking ones.

So, what else can you do to improve your chart? Ah, yes: the y-axis in a humdrum column chart always starts at zero. We don’t want that, do we?

Ugly Excel bar charts

Now you know how to make inaccurate, professional-looking, spiffy-with-a-flair marmalade charts. Please go straight to the kitchen, make some real marmalade and forget all you’ve learned about data visualization in the Microsoft Office Online Training.

(This is not a real Microsoft Office Training site, is it? It must be some kind of spoof site, and I fell for that trick. Right? Right?)

Sigh…

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Is Data Visualization Useful? You’ll Have to Prove It.

by Jorge

Great data visualization is hard to measure: you can’t prove you have a good chart. Unless you can convince your employer to deploy at least two different formats/layouts and are able to compare results, you can say “this is a good chart” but that’s an act of faith, not an act of science.

It’s True Because It Rhymes

Information visualization experts like to evaluate a chart based on its compliance to some more or less accepted standards (Tufte’s data-ink ratio, for example). That’s like saying “it must be true because it rhymes”: the truth is defined by the language itself, not by the real world. Now, please close the curtains of our ivory tower…

I know, it’s not easy to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of good displays. They look natural and obvious, undeserving of praise and, probably, boring and uninspiring. Compare these charts:

Bubble charts

This is a true story: users wanted to evaluate sales territories, one at a time. Color-coding each bubble (Example A) was pointless, while Example B provided context without distractions. Guess what chart they would choose if they were allowed to… (happy ending: they reluctantly accepted Example B). (A word of advice: if you are looking for a promotion, a kindergarten chart variety always outperforms a “serious” chart.)

If your chart is doing a good job at helping people, no one will actually be aware of the chart’s role at making sense of the data. That’s why it is so hard to find good examples of data visualization using standard charts. If people actually like them, they like them because of their usability and/or interactive features.

When Stephen Few asks the readers “true stories about the benefits of data visualization” that’s almost an admission of impotence.  He should have hundreds if not thousands of good examples to share with us, right? Well, I know there are many examples out there, but I can give you none, sorry. Is data visualization some kind of astrology? I know it works. Why? Because I have faith. (On second thought, he is not asking for good data visualization examples. It really doesn’t matter if you use Tableau or Xcelsius, and that’s a relief.)

Opening the Pandora Box

Ultimately, what makes a good chart is how it resonates with your audience. Assuming that your are not unethically distorting the data, a chart that forces people to act is better than another one that only makes people aware of the subject.

If a single chart can save the world, it will not be a Few’s or Tufte’s 100% compliant chart. It will be a glossy Xcelsius pie chart.

(Wow, that’s depressing…)

If you read this blog that’s a clear sign of intelligence and sophistication :) . Unfortunately, you are not representative of the typical data visualization user and/or producer. The real world loves pie charts and doesn’t understand scatter plots.

Here is my Pandora box: give the audience what it expects and understands, even if that hurts your data visualization soul (OK, give it 90% of what it expects and use the remaining 10% to educate it.)

Cultural Relativism? Not So Fast.

Please don’t misrepresent these arguments. I’m not saying that all charts are born equal. There is a reference point and some misconceptions should be avoided A chart that maximizes insights, removes clutter, uses color wisely and clearly shows the patterns hidden in vast amounts of data, that’s probably a good chart and that’s what you should aim for. And yes, you should avoid pie charts.

If you present some sophisticated charts to your unsophisticated audience you’ll lose it. Relax. Draw a line but don’t forget the candies. You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make him drink, unless you give him some sugar cubes…

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Animation, Interaction and Dynamic Excel Charts

by Jorge

If you want to add animation to your charts that’s a clear sign that you have too much free time. Go out and play with the kids instead. :)

Yes, animation is a powerful attention-grabber, even more powerful than a glossy 3D pie chart in Crystal Xcelsius. And yes, it can actually be helpful (from time to time). But.

A good example of animation in data visualization is the famous Hans Rosling’s TED presentation, where a long-term pattern is clearly seen (at min 4:00):

This works well because the trend is easily identifiable and you don’t care much about the details. It would be much more difficult to make sense of this data if there were multiple trends and short-term variability. (More on the use of animated charts.)

After watching this presentation people often ask me: “Wow! Can we do that in Excel?” Wrong question. The right question would be “Wow! Can our data do that?”.

You can always create a simple animation in Excel, but it’s hard for a non-programmer to get a smooth transition effect. Here is an example from my dynamic Excel dashboard:

Although you can see a pattern emerging, you would need to add a complex interpolation routine to make it look better (read Jon’s post to see how a simple interpolation can be used).

Animation is better used if there is a pattern to be discovered, but you need something more: the ability to interact with the data. You must be able to stop, go back, get the details. While you can create a simple animation effect with a for/next loop in VBA, interaction with the chart is much easier using a Google spreadsheet with a motion chart:

(This is just an image. Click here to play with the chart.)

Dynamic Charts in Excel

In Excel, instead of creating a VBA routine, consider using a scroll bar linked to the value you want to change (year, for example):

Using a scroll bar adds some level of interaction because you can scroll back and forth, pause and examine the details for a specific year. Obviously, you need to change the chart data source dynamically.

Let’s recap how to create a dynamic chart in Excel. You can do it by changing values or by changing the data source itself (using a different range).

Option #1: Copying the Data

The range A1:E11 is our data set and we are comparing regions. Moving the scroll bar at the bottom changes the year. Column F is our data source. You can enter this formula there:

=OFFSET($A$1,ROW()-1,MATCH($A$13,$B$1:$E$1,0),1,1)

ROW() gets the current row and MATCH() returns the position of value 2002 (A13) in the range B1:E1. So, the formula in cell F2 reads something like this: start at A1, go down one row, go right three columns and get the data in that cell (range of width 1 and height 1). When the user selects a different year the data is copied to column F.

Option #2: Using a Dynamic Named Range

The second option is to create a dynamic named range. Create a named range and, instead of entering a fixed range, enter this formula:

=OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,1,MATCH(Sheet1!$A$13,Sheet1!$B$1:$E$1,0),10,1)

As you can see, it is very similar to the one above, but now the number of rows down is fixed (1) and it returns a range of 10×1 cells (because we have 10 regions, but if the number of regions varies you may use COUNTA(A:A)-1 to count the number of regions, excluding header – and don’t forget to move the year to a different cell…).

When you verify your range this is what you get:

You just need to use this range in your chart (when entering the range you must add the workbook name: “=Book1!SourceData”). You’ll also need a range for the category axis labels:

=OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,1,0,10,1)

You can download the spreadsheet here.

Take Aways

If you want to animate your charts make sure you do it because it adds value, not because you want to show off your skills. You can do it in Excel but it looks much better in Rosling’s Trendalyzer or in the Google spreadsheet gadget.

To create animations your data source must change dynamically, and that requires some work (and skills). I advise you to shift your focus from animation to interaction and use all that work to design a better user experience. Do you prefer a “wow!” (animation) or a “wow, thank you!” (interaction that actually helps the user)?

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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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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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Sub-Prime Charts: Should Data Visualization Be Boring?

by Jorge

In a recent article for the New York Times, Paul Krugman, the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, writes:

“The banking industry that emerged from that collapse [the Great Depression] was tightly regulated, far less colorful than it had been before the Depression, and far less lucrative for those who ran it. Banking became boring, partly because bankers were so conservative about lending (…).Strange to say, this era of boring banking was also an era of spectacular economic progress for most Americans.”

Now that history is repeating itself, I believe that this applies to data visualization too. The 3D pie chart with pseudo-realistic textures, charting tools like Dundas, Crystal Xcelsius and Excel 2007′s charting engine, they all share the same spirit of the times that nurtured the sub-prime lending mess and all that followed. The spirit of the times that rewards illusory short-term results and effectively dismisses consistent, well-founded, long term strategies.

Can’t We Learn?

We may be scared of the future, but are we scared enough? Krugman again:

“Despite everything that has happened, most people in positions of power still associate fancy finance with economic progress. Can they be persuaded otherwise? Will we find the will to pursue serious financial reform? If not, the current crisis won’t be a one-time event; it will be the shape of things to come.”

Many business managers still associate fancy charts with serious decision-supporting tools. This is the right time to change. Eye-candy, “professional looking” charts are sub-prime charts, and if you take them seriously, they’ll do to your business what sub-prime lending is doing to the world economy.

Take a Chart Stress Test

Good charts are invisible. If your audience’s first comments go to your chart format and design, that’s a sure sign that something is wrong. Get back to your charting tool and create a new chart. Do it as many times as necessary. The audience must see and comment the data patterns only, not the chart.

Charts don’t have to be boring. ”If the statistics are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers” says Tufte. If you need your daily adrenaline shot, get it from the insights a good chart provides, not from the chart design.

What do you think? Is this crisis creating a serious “back to the basics” spirit that will influence the way organizations optimize their resources, including the time they spend creating useless charts and presentations?

Photo credit: Steve Kay

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Can Edward Tufte Do Business Charts?

by Jorge

1. Tufte, the Father of Eye-Candy Charts

Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, published in 1983, is probably the most influential book in the history of data visualization, and it is likely to remain so for some more time.

In his book, Tufte outlines for the first time a consistent theory of how a chart object should look like and why it should look like that. His guidelines are easy to understand and very quotable, not buried under six feet of abstractions. Think of well-known concepts like “data-ink ratio”, “data-density” or “chartjunk”: they all come from The Visual Display…

However, too often these principles are taken as self-evident, somehow “discovered”, not invented. A fundamental clarification must be made: these are aesthetic principles that Tufte transposes (brilliantly) from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s minimalism to the field of data visualization. These are not universal principles backed up by scientific evidence. Some studies find them helpful, some studies say they are irrelevant, but their effectiveness is hard to measure and they should not be taken as indisputable laws (I call this the “what-would-tufte-say syndrome“).

Unlike other authors (Jacques Bertin, Tukey, William Cleveland), Tufte recognizes that only an aesthetic framework can structure the image (color management, the role of non-data objects, how to emphasize/de-emphasize elements in a chart…). This is clearly the realm of graphic design.

Using aesthetics to improve function is probably the major contribution of Edward Tufte to the display of quantitative information. Unfortunately, this idea that a chart can be an aesthetically pleasing object (“Beautiful Evidence”, the title of his latest book, says it all) went astray and gave birth to a whole industry of eye-candy visualization tools.

From Tufte’s positivist point of view, a chart is defined by how well it makes a pattern stand out. It may be boring but, if that is the case, then “you’ve got the wrong numbers”. His faith in human rationality is both charming and frightening…

2. Patterns, patterns, patterns. And something else.

There are so many misconceptions  to discuss about data visualization that we often forget to emphasize this simple true: data visualization is about pattern discovery, finding useful, actionable visual patterns hidden in the data and make them stand out. Let me repeat: it’s all about visual patterns.

Tufte would agree, but here is the fun part: there is nothing wrong with using 3D effects, textures, and all the decoration in the world. Use them! It is your good taste against Tufte’s. You don’t have to like minimalism. Add color, clipart, anything that you think can engage your audience.

I am not kidding. It’s you, not Tufte, who defines your aesthetic program. Almost anything goes. But, whatever you do:

  • Don’t design technically incorrect charts: do not distort a circle, do not use more than one series in a pie chart, do not make an object variate in two dimensions when you are using a single series, etc. Just common sense, really. And, of course, if you want to break the rules, know them first.
  • Don’t hide the patterns: find the patterns and make them visible. Remove everything except the series themselves. Now start embellishing your chart. But remember: every little thing you add multiplies the clutter and makes the patterns harder to see. You’ll have to find that point where the impact of eye-catching decoration on pattern visualization goes beyond an acceptable threshold.

Please note that minimalism was not randomly chosen. Not only it makes pattern discovery much simpler but also creates a framework to evaluate what belongs to the chart and what doesn’t belong. You can reject it, but if you don’t have a different framework you must decide on an ad hoc basis. Unless you are an accomplished graphic designer (and even then), a minimalist approach is a good start and it should help you to find your own style.

3. Emotions, Emotions, Emotions

Let’s face it: you don’t have much choice. If you do not want to sacrifice patterns, the amount of of decoration that you can actually use is very limited.

So, what do you do with that limited amount of decoration? Essentially you’ll try to create the right emotional response. This is not what you would expect from a over-positivist chart that you end up with by choosing the minimalist path.

Refusing to acknowledge the role of emotions in data visualization is a bizarre thing, considering that you can’t remove aesthetics from the equation, and we all have an emotional sense of Beauty. What many hardcore Tufte fans may consider chartjunk can actually keep the audience from turning the page.

4. Edward Tufte and Excel

Throughout his books, Tufte often refers to the higher resolution of paper, and how it outperforms the current screen resolutions. His sparklines are meant to be printed, because only then the fine details can be observed.

In Edward Tufte’s vision, each chart is unique, and deserves the attention of a work of art. He despises PowerPoint and hardly mentions Excel. His charting tool is Adobe Illustrator, where he is in full control of each small detail. He admonishes against patronizing the readers, but he never really discusses the audience as something that should be taken into account when designing a chart.

5. Knowledge Is Built by the User

matrixpermutator

Much as changed in the last 27 years and you may think that Tufte’s The Visual Display… emphasizes the use of paper just because the extraordinary changes in information technology were still in their infancy back in 1983.

Thing is, that’s not the reason. The real reason is that Tufte always thought of a chart as a final product to be printed and handed to the audience, not something that could be manipulated by the audience.

There is a striking difference between Edward Tufte and Jacques Bertin. Bertin’s “reorderable matrix” is dynamic by definition, and and one of my preferred quotes summarizes perfectly his views:

“It is the internal mobility of the image which characterizes modern graphics. A graphic is no longer ‘drawn’ once and for all; it is ‘constructed’ and reconstructed (manipulated) until all the relationships which lie within it have been perceived.”

This was written in 1967, long before the PC was even imagined. Edward Tufte wants to design an efficient but elegant chart, Bertin wants to solve a business problem. There is no contradiction, one is not better than the other. They just serve different masters. (The image above is from Bertin’s Graphic Semiology and shows how a “dynamic chart” looked in 1967…)

Forty years have passed, but a vast majority of data users have no access to dynamic charts, either because they don’t have access to the right charting tools or they are unable to create those charts using their current tools (it is not that easy for a beginner to create a dynamic chart in Excel).

6. The Life Span of a Business Chart

In his essay “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint” Edward Tufte argues that the tool itself is intrinsically flawed. I agree with him. Tools are not neutral. They can be forced to do things against their will, but that’s never easy. You can create a dynamic chart in Excel, but it is difficult. You can even force Excel to work like Tableau, but that’s like reinventing the wheel. You can create good chart in Crystal Xcelsius, but that’s against its nature.

The point is, you can apply Edward Tufte’s principles by the book, but that means spending hours perfecting a chart in Illustrator and then printing it. I’d love to. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how things work in a business environment. The life span of a business chart is short and the time to create it, even shorter. We cannot use Illustrator to create business charts.

7. Take-Away Points

Break away from Edward Tufte, but make sure you know why. Add emotion to your charts (rationally). Decide if the level of eye-candy your audience needs goes beyond what you are willing to add. Other things been equal, an interactive chart should need less eye-candy than a static one. Above all, show the patterns (but make sure your audience wants to see them).

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14 Misconceptions About Charts and Graphs

by Jorge

Misconception #1: A Better Chart Starts With… the Chart

Wrong. It starts by asking yourself if you really need one. Perhaps a statistical measure of some sort is good enough, perhaps you should use a table. If your job is to find patterns in a data set and build shared knowledge about it, what really matters is how efficiently the message is sent, and how efficiently it is received by the audience (two different things).

Misconception #2: You Should Master the (Technological) Tools of the Trade

No, you don’t. Just because you know how to create a chart in Excel it doesn’t mean that you know how to create a chart. If you use Microsoft Excel as your charting software then yes, you should learn more Excel (to spend more time with the kids). But you must go beyond technology, or else you end up creating some very stupid charts. Please note that a vast majority of Excel training courses will not teach you what it should (best practices). It will only tell you how to make “cool” graphs, like a 3D exploded pie chart.

Misconception #3: Defaults are good enough

They aren’t. Each chart must be tailored to the specific data set, audience and message. For instance, try to create a graph that clearly displays a large number of series and you’ll fail if you use the defaults (but can do it with clever color coding). And if you use recognizable defaults, like the Excel 2003 charts, you’ll look very, very, lazy (at best).

Misconception #4: Vendors obviously implement the very best templates

(I’ve heard this one recently, and I found it so incredibly naive that I had to write about it.) They don’t. About 90% of the Excel 2003 chart gallery is junk, and you must heavily reformat the remaining 10% to get something useful. Select other tools, like Crystal Xcelsius and the scenario is even worse. And I am unable to create in Cognos something that remotely resembles a chart (people tell me that version 8.4 is a little better).

Misconception #5: Better charts are just “prettier” charts

I hear this all the time. A good chart may look “prettier”, but that’s just an unintended consequence of a design that communicates better. In information visualization, prettiness must be a by-product of function. The very concept of a “better communicator” is sometimes difficult to comprehend, and trying to explain it is a waste of time, because people need to see it in action. You must take the user by the hand and guide him/her. You must force comparisons: “what can you learn about x using this chart?” and “what can you learn about x using that chart?” “how long did it take you to learn x using this and using that?”.

Misconception #6: It’s All About the Wow Factor

It is not. Many marketers and graphic designers fail to understand this. Marketers are hopeless in their relentless search for the wow factor and the eye-catching, “professional-looking” graphs, and graphic designers should know better, but they prefer to sacrifice data on the altar of Beauty (form is everything, data is a nuisance).

The dominant view among visualization experts (namely Tufte and Few) is that “form follows function“: every ornament in a graph should be eliminated, every object must serve a clear purpose, efficiency should be maximized (labeling series instead of using a legend, for instance). Given the extremely low graphic literacy levels among the general population, this may not always be the best approach.

Misconception #7: A good chart displays the actual values

No. If you label each data point you get a useless table over a useless chart. Labels are not only a distraction but often actually hide patterns in the data. Short labels and annotations can, and should, be used to identify or explain outliers or other interesting data points and circumstances. If your audience expects to see the underlying data then add a link to the table.

Misconception #8: Good Charts Should Be Read at a Glance

No, they don’t. The more complex, the longer it takes. It really doesn’t matter if it takes a second or an hour. What matter is how efficiently the graph  communicates. If a chart takes for ever to be read look for bottlenecks: the series are not easily identifiable, patterns are hidden, demands on the working memory are high, etc.

Misconception #9: The More Detail the Better

What we see as detail can be seen by someone else as clutter. Clutter is the natural child of loss aversion and is is very difficult to remove. If you have 12 competitors your audience will want to see the market share for each of them, even if it doesn’t make any sense. Tufte says “to clarify, add detail”, and yes, 12 competitors in a line chart can be made clear and useful, but you must know how to categorize them and provide a framework to help the user (you can use a large number of categories in a pie chart, for instance).

Misconception #10: It’s All About Selling Your Point, No Nuances

In The three laws of great graphs Seth Godin says that “there is no room for nuance [in a presentation]” and your charts should reflect that. Maybe it is just me, but I hate it when I am not allowed to draw my own conclusions because the data made available by the presenter is too biased towards his/her own points of view. Depending on the situation, a clear path that is supported by a lot of details is much better than a yes/no pie chart.

Misconception #11: You Have to Have Color, Lots of Color

Wrong. Color is a very difficult subject. Large surfaces of primary colors like we often see in presentations should be avoided because they are hard on the eyes and, because everything stands out, nothing stand out. A good option is to use grays for non-data elements like grid lines, and pale colors for color-coding. As a rule of thumb, color should always carry some meaning. Use primary colors to highlight a data point or some other small detail.

Misconception #12: A Single Chart is Enough

It is not. We live in an increasingly complex world, and traditional charts are very simple tools. While we wait for a new set of charts to be invented, we can use interaction (see below) and multiple charts to create a richer picture. That’s why scatter plot matrices, small multiples or trellis displays, and specially those multiple variations of executive dashboards are much more powerful than a simple chart.

Misconception #13: Charts Are Interchangeable

They aren’t. You can use a column chart or a line chart to display a time series, but while a line chart performs better than a column chart when reading trends, it is easier to compare data points using a column chart. Most visualization experts will tell you that you should use a bar chart instead of a pie chart (also because it is easier to compare data points), but a pie chart gives you the perception of a whole that is absent in a bar chart. Every graph has its own strengths, and you should select the one that suits your needs.

Misconception #14: Create It and Forget It

Don’t. Making sense of your data is a process of exploration and discovery. A pattern in a subset may be hidden by a noisy background. Different measures may lead to more complex insights. Creating a chart that the user can interact with should always be your primary goal. Unfortunately, that’s beyond the skills of an intermediate Excel user (if you what to learn about interactive charts my Excel dashboards may be a good starting point).

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This post lists 14 widespread misconceptions about charts, but probably is a very incomplete list and you may not agree with all of them. What misconceptions would you add/remove?

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[Update: Jon has been writing extensively about Excel 2003 and Excel 2007 (by the way, it's a great resource that helps us to see through the marketing noise). I said in the comments below that I prefer to use Excel 2007 charts to post images in this blog. He doesn't agree and he tries to prove in his last post that charts in Excel 2003 are actually better. He uses good examples to prove his point but I still believe that this (Excel 2007):

looks better than this (Excel 2003):

Yes, probably there is an "overaggressive anti-aliasing", but the line in Excel 2003 is too "crispy" for my taste. Again, it is just a matter of creating images for a blog, not exactly for serious work...]

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