by Stephanie Evergreen | May 15, 2019 | Uncategorized
Some might claim they look at a blank PowerPoint slide and see a source of hope and possibility, similar to how artists supposedly see inspiration in a blank canvas. I call bullshit on this. Artists did not just walk up to a blank canvas and envision their end...
by Stephanie Evergreen | May 1, 2019 | Uncategorized
Here’s how to make them more effective. Diagrams come in many different flavors – mind maps, concept maps, flow charts, and so on – but at the core, they are all visualizations of how themes relate to one another. As ubiquitous as diagrams are, they have some...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Apr 17, 2019 | Uncategorized
When Jenny Lyons and I were pulling together the revised chapter on Qualitative Visualization in Effective Data Visualization, 2nd edition, we ended up ditching this section on dendrograms. In the list of most-likely-to-use qualitative visuals, this one is probably...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Apr 3, 2019 | Uncategorized
Every time I show this trick to even veteran Excel ninjas, their heads explode. So you have probably heard me preach the gospel of small multiples once or twice before. Breaking a clutter-y graph into a lot of smaller graphs that show one piece of data at a time can...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Mar 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
I have learned all of these lessons the hard way. I now have two checklists I run through before I have a workshop. One handles logistics and it’ll only be useful if you also run workshops. The other helps me determine whether a potential client and I are a good...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Mar 6, 2019 | Uncategorized
The Lines section of the Data Visualization Checklist helps us enhance reader interpretability by handling a lot of the junk, or what Edward Tufte called the “noise” in the graph. I’m referring to all of the parts of the graph that don’t...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Feb 20, 2019 | Uncategorized
Listen, no one cares about the order we listed the response options on the survey. But most graphs, especially those automatically generated from survey software, showcase the data in that order. And that isn’t useful for anyone trying to interpret the data....
by Stephanie Evergreen | Feb 6, 2019 | Uncategorized
Did you see Vice? There’s a scene (this is no spoiler) in which a young Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia share a sickening laugh as they agree to an interpretation of the Constitution that allowed a massive power grab for a president. It’s gross. It’s...
by Stephanie Evergreen | Jan 23, 2019 | Uncategorized
This is not news. Today. Yesterday. Every day. I fail all the time. I have so many data visualization fails that I’m already planning a conference talk called The Compromises I’ve Made. I published some of my failures in a book edited by Kylie Hutchinson....
by Stephanie Evergreen | Jan 9, 2019 | Uncategorized
This is my last personal annual report. I’ll tell you why. This year most of my metrics went down. At first, due to cultural conditioning that says “more is always better,” I was like Oh no! Before I go further, let’s pause and break that down....
