Chart Chat Live — Round 23
Our discussion with inventor, data visualization pioneer, and industry icon, Ben Shneiderman. https://youtu.be/nrLutRyr1L4
Chart Chat Live — Round 22
Ros Pearce, data journalist at The Economist, visits Chart Chat. It was a great discussion. https://youtu.be/JPfzinma9QU
The Blessing and Curse of Being a Professional Chart Looker-atter
Overview There are times when an attendee at one of my workshops will share a chart or dashboard that is extremely complicated, to the point where I have a lot of trouble parsing it. I point out that I am a “professional chart looker-atter” and that if I am having trouble understanding the dashboard, I [...]
Chart Chat Live — Round 20
Revisit the political divide in the US, take a deep dive into a Washington Post visualization about vaccine intentions among healthcare workers, showcase some stellar social media data visualization projects, and review Robert Kosara's video on the famous Minard chart. https://youtu.be/kXn3aqGIOXk
Try to Avoid Color Legends
Let me show you a few techniques that will allow you to ditch color legends and in so doing make it easier for your audience to understand the charts you create. Direct Labeling Lines Here’s a “before” picture of a simple line chart with a color legend. Figure 1 - Line chart with color legend. [...]
The Data Detective
The Data Detective Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics by Tim Harford Readers of my blog and newsletter know that I am a big fan of the books Factfulness and Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). I want to add Tim Harford’s The Data Detective to this “how to make sense [...]
Chart Chat Live — Round 19
We discuss bar-in-bar charts, scaredy-cats and TURDs, great work from the New York Times, how to visualize 500,000 deaths, and the orange/blue debate. https://youtu.be/kco5U5wgDfY
Chart Chat Live — Round 18
In this Chart Chat we reflect on Sankey and proportion charts, unit charts, unemployment charts and presenting complex data. https://youtu.be/IIirXyOcbeQ
Thinking about the performing arts during the pandemic
The best encapsulation I’ve heard of the past year comes from a colleague, Jon Cohen of SurveyMonkey, who saw this twitter post: There’s so much to be grateful for, but so little to be happy about. I am very grateful that there remains a demand for my services, but I [...]
Screaming Cats, Scaredy-Cats, and TURDs
January 18, 2021 Some thoughts about critique in data visualization. Background For the past 18 months I’ve been working on a new book (more on this in a moment). Last September, I asked some colleagues to review selected chapters. I asked everybody to review the preface, which included this passage: My friend Jonathan Schwabish provided [...]
