Always ask yourself: “what can I remove from this chart”? Remove Excel defaults, remove grid lines, make the chart smaller, use soft colors, remove irrelevant labels, remove the legend (by directly labeling series), remove series that you don’t really need, remove frames, remove decimal places, remove visual
Read more →Archive for the ‘Theory’ Category
More data = better decisions, right? Not always. When you are getting more information than you can process within a specific time period information overload starts creeping. Confusion, stress, anxiety and low motivation usually follow. Can we prevent that? In general, the more information you have, the
Read more →This is the second of 10 posts where I’m listing tips for better charts. Please take a look at the first post where the project is discussed. These are my chart formatting tips: Use the right chart type for the data and the problem; Apply sound design
Read more →This is the first in a series of 10 posts where I’ll suggest a (hopefully) coherent set of tips to improve our charts and, more important, to improve the way we make sense of the data. These are the planned posts: General charting; Formating; Column/Bar charts; Line
Read more →The relevance principle means that every variation should carry a meaning, derived from data variation, not from design variation. If it doesn’t, it can be confusing or misleading. Suppose chart A displays population density by country. “Vary colors by point” is an option in Excel, but why
Read more →You can’t write a novel just because you can type. You can’t create a chart just because you know how to do it in Excel. First, you have to know the job, then the tool. Research for best practices in your field. Read what some authors have
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