February 6, 2019 My earlier post on why I don’t like Population Pyramids generated a lot of communication on twitter and this communication lead to what I think is an elegant and analytically solid offering from Chris Love. His contribution was in the result of iterating and collaborating with several people, including Dorian Banutoiu [...]
February 4, 2019 A special thanks to Chris Love who provided an elegant way to build the dashboard I show at the end of this post. Note: Make sure to read the follow-up article here. Some amazing stuff happened in just a couple of ours from when I first posted this article. Background I’ve [...]
Some thoughts on why pursuing the perfect chart is not a great use of your time January 22, 2019 Background During Chart Chat (Round Two) I discussed my affection for the lollipop chart and why I thought it was an acceptable alternative to the bar chart. My friend and colleague, Chris Love, was watching [...]
And a great way to visualize Pareto analysis December 2, 2018 Special thanks to Lindsey Poulter, Andy Cotgreave, Jeffrey Shaffer, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Robert Kosara, Adam Crahen, and Joey Cherdarchuk. Overview While at this year’s Tapestry conference (by far my favorite conference) I had the good fortune to literally bump into Joey Cherdarchuk from [...]
More thoughts on the Markimekko chart and in particular how to build one in Tableau. April 4, 2017 Overview Given my reluctance to embrace odd chart types and my conviction that I would find something better I was surprised to find myself last month writing about -- and endorsing -- the Marimekko chart. If I [...]
Or How I stopped worrying and learned to love appreciate the Marimekko March 19, 2017 Overview Readers of my blog know that I suffer from what Maarten Lambrechts calls xenographphobia, the fear of unusual graphics. I’ll encounter a chart type that I’ve not seen before, purse my lips, and think (smugly) that there is undoubtedly [...]
By Steve Wexler and Jeffrey Shaffer January 9, 2017 Please also see follow-up post. Overview Makeover Monday, started by Andy Kriebel in 2009 and turned into a weekly social data project by Kriebel and Andy Cotgreave in 2016, is now one of the biggest community endeavors in data visualization. By the end of 2016 there were over 3,000 [...]
Overview As readers of this blog know, I have my problems with donut charts. That said, I acknowledge that they can be cool and, under certain circumstances, enormously useful. On a recent flight I was struck by how much I liked the animated “estimated time to arrival” donut chart that appeared on my personal TV [...]
Overview My obsession with finding the best way to visualize data will often infiltrate my dreams. In my slumbers I find myself dragging Tableau pills in an ongoing pursuit to come up with the ideal dashboard that shines light on whatever data set has invaded my psyche. But is the pursuit of the perfect dashboard [...]
Overview This past week I enjoyed looking at and interacting with Matt Chambers’ car color popularity bump chart. Figure 1 -- Matt Chambers' car color popularity bump chart. You can find the original Datagraver visualization upon which this was based here. The key to this dashboard is interactivity as it’s hard to parse all [...]
