DSA Insights

I found the chart below in the Numbers section of the January 28th issue of BusinessWeek. The purpose of the data visualization is to show the degree of dependability by automaker. The assumption is that you are quickly going to look for the maker of an automobile you may own, hence the alpha sort. If I am in the market for a new vehicle, I may be more interested in the automakers that are the most dependable. If that was the intention, a descending sort by rating would have been best. Ideally, there would be an interactive option online to sort either way using a radio button, sort hyperlink or check box.

The title of the page is: Detroit is still behind despite hard-won gains. I can only assume that the automakers located in the U.S. are those labeled in bold. I find that both the print and soft copy don’t make them stand out enough. I may have used a different color (subtle) to denote the U.S. automakers.

I find that the yellow spheres are redundant and make the visual more complicated than necessary. A change that may help is to either eliminate the yellow spheres or remove the filling and use the same color. Also, by using the same color without fill, you have the option for half increments. The image below was created using Harvey Balls, which are extremely easy to use and add to your data visualization toolkit. Check out an earlier post to learn more about Harvey Balls.

Note: the print version below has the legend on top and rotated 90 degrees to make it horizontal, which is easier to read.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 3:15 am and is filed under Analytics, Presentation, Reporting, Tony. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.