Archives
Stop Asking if the Slides are Available
The thing is, if the presenter has done a great job, you really don’t want the slides. No really, you don’t. A long long time ago, Garr Reynolds taught me that if someone can look at your slideshow and tell all the things you are going to say, there’s no need for you, as the […]
Guest Post: Chari Smith with a 1 Page Research Summary
Stephanie’s Note: Readers are always asking me for more examples of a 1 page research or executive summary and Chari Smith of CRSmith Consulting has a really nice one here that is visual and yet doesn’t involve a single graph! I have a long history of working with the Willamette Valley Development Office [Stephanie’s Note: […]
Data-Driven Decisions in a Fortune 500
More and more, organizations are on board with the idea of becoming “data-driven.” Collecting data on key indicators is a big step ahead from where many organizations used to be. But being able to interpret that data and share it with others in an intelligent way is equally as important and most organizations don’t focus […]
How a Dashboard Changes the Conversation
Presenting data effectively changes the kinds of conversations that can happen inside organizations. Better presentations shape an improved culture of decision-making. Let me tell you about a recent example of this. Late 2012 I got a call from an evaluation officer who was working at the Walton Family Foundation. (Yep – *those* Waltons. Whatever your […]
Numbers, Guts, & Culture: How Data Visualization Changes the Conversation
Numbers have power, if you have the courage to use them powerfully. Take these two stories from opposite ends of the 20th Century. The first story is about a man in a steel mill. The second is about the crash of a giant. Charles Schwab had a mill manager whose people weren’t producing their quota of work. […]
My 2014 Personal Annual Report
Holy smokes it’s been a big year! I finished up my last workshop of 2014 last week and as I got into the cab to head to the airport, a wave of major sleepiness hit me hard. I’ve been super crazy productive and worked with some of the most amazing clients and become a pro […]
Customizing Colors in Excel
Few things scream “I didn’t try very hard” more than using the Excel default color schemes. Good news is that changing them up isn’t really very hard at all. First, decide what other colors you would like. Maybe pick something from your organizational brand. I used ColorBrewer to come up with the color scheme here. […]
Directly Labeling in Excel
It’s time to ditch the legend. You know – the legend, the key, the thing to the right of the graph that tells the reader what each piece of your graph means. We don’t need it. Legends are actually hard for many people to work with because they put a burden on the reader to […]
Visualizing Likert-type Data: Try Aggregated Stacked Bars
Man, do researchers love Likert-type data! You know what I mean – the kind of survey response options that range from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree (or vice versa, depending on your allegiances). Probably the most common way of visualizing that data is via a stacked bar chart, just like the one below created by […]
When It’s OK to NOT Start Your Axis at Zero
Don’t kick me out of the dataviz club for this. For a long time, folks have been adamant that the y axis has to start at zero. Otherwise, we are exaggerating the scale of the graph, distorting data, and lying like we work for Fox News. I’ve had my reservations about this but been comfortable […]
