Jorge Camoes’ Charts

Nathan, over the FlowingData blog, points to this video where John Tukey himself discusses the analysis of multivariate data using computers… in 1972. The library contains other great videos, so I encourage you to explore it.
Tukey had an enormous impact in the way we look at the data, but exactly who are “we”? Are “we” [...]

Stephen Few shares with us his capstone presentation that he delivered at InfoVis 2007. If you follow his newsletter or his blog (you should) there is nothing really new but, if you don’t, this is a good summary of his views regarding information visualization.
I’d like to comment a few points.
Knowing how to use Excel or [...]

For many of us this is a provocative question. Haven’t Tufte, Few, Cleveland and many others proved that, beyond reasonable doubt? Isn’t there a prosperous industry based on the obvious usefulness of charts and information visualization? Is everyone wrong?
Let me play devil’s advocate here. A large majority of charts you’ll find in the corporate sector [...]

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 should you use it? This is a design variation [...]

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 to say about specific formats and options. Then, [...]

How to create better charts? Search the web and you’ll find many specific advices, not always backed up by scientific evidence (can there be any?). Tufte’s advices are great for us, rational, positivist members of the human race, but what about those emotional poor fellows for whom a minimalistic chart is just a boring chart?
Can [...]

Scatterplots are not used by the NY Times because readers simply can’t make sense of them. Don’t oversimplify, but don’t assume that your audience can read a complex chart. Know your audience, and if possible test your charts with a small sample. Know what they expect, deliver that and perhaps a little more. When [...]

Suppose you are sharing a list of orders with some co-workers. One of them wants to see the higher sales orders [list]. Another one wants to know how much was exported to France [table]. The next one needs the average items per order [descriptive statistics]. You want to see the growth trend for several products [...]

A chart is just one of the available tools to communicate and help you and your audience to understand the data; sometimes using a chart is just plain wrong: if variation seems random or non-existent, what’s the point of displaying the data graphically (yes, I know, sometimes that’s what you want to [...]

This chart [via Junk Charts] in the New York Times uses a “tornado” chart (a population pyramid-like chart) to display two series, advertising spending in measured (traditional media) and unmeasured (Internet…) channels.
When discussing how to create population pyramids, I wrote that I don’t really like tornado charts, specially if you only have two series, [...]