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It has been no secret that I have been a big fan of BusinessWeek (BW) over the last few years.  Many of the data visualizations have given me material for this blog whether it’s praise or constructive.  Ever since Bloomberg took over the reigns and redesigned the magazine, the data visualizations have been down right terrible.

As you can clearly see below, the charts and graphs went from mediocre to downright awful.  I never would have looked to BW for innovation on the data visualization front like I would The New York Times, but this material should be embarrassing. 

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I get it that this area isn’t the focus for BW, but at least bring it up to par.   Josh, call me and we’ll get this straightened out.

The image below appeared in the redesigned issue of BusinessWeek after Bloomberg acquired the magazine.  I will honestly say that I studied it for a few minutes and read the text a few times before I really understood what the data was showing. 

I think the psychedelic layout of the bubbles adds a confusing element to the visualization that is unnecessary.  There are a bunch of different ways to show this data that would be more straight forward and easier for the readers to understand.

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Do you think the visualization layout/design adds or takes away from the data?

If you ever sat through a live presentation that contained at least one chart, chances are that you have heard the term “eye chart”.  This is an expression used to make light of the fact that people sitting farther than about two feet away probably can’t see or make out the details of the chart due to its size.  Technically, it refers to the chart that is used by physicians or others to judge a person’s vision.  Personally, I’ve heard this term way too much and it prompted this post.

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Over the past few years I have accumulated a bunch of different resources that I find extremely valuable.  Most of these utilities/products are for Excel, but not all of them.  Historically, you could find an ad or link to these products scattered throughout my blog pages.  I have combined all of the affiliate products I support onto one page that is called e-Store.  Now the main pages of this blog should appear less cluttered.

You can find this page by clicking here or by clicking on the e-Store link in the header of this blog.  There are some great utilities, Excel add-in products and e-books that you should check out.  Many of them will make life easier and some will enlighten.  Here is a summary list of what is available.

1. Waterfall Chart (Excel Add-in)
2. Box and Whisker Chart (Excel Add-in)
3. Dot Plot Chart (Excel Add-in)
4. Learn Excel Formulas (Tutorial)
5. Dashboard Reporting with Excel (Tutorial)
6. MicroCharts (Excel Add-in)

If you have any products that you would like to have included on this new page, please contact me.  The links above contain affiliate products that, if purchased, generate a small commission for Support Analytics.

A special thank you goes to Elissa Fink of Tableau for providing me with a demo of Tableau Public.  With being a big fan of Tableau desktop, it should be no surprise that Tableau Public impressed me for many of the same reasons I like the desktop version.

Today is the official release of Tableau Public and the latest version of Tableau Desktop 5.1.  Below you will find some quotes from today’s press release:

SEATTLE, WA, February 11, 2010 – Tableau Software today launched a new product that brings public data to life on the web. Tableau Public, available for free, lets anyone who posts content to the web easily create interactive visualizations and publish them to blogs, web sites, Twitter feeds or anywhere online. Instead of viewing static charts or tables, Tableau Public lets people answer questions and share data interactively on the web.

Current alternatives for sharing data online are clumsy. Typically, data is pasted into tables and lists, or posted as files or catalogs that are difficult to use. Available at Tableaupublic.com, Tableau Public is helping to solve this challenge – bringing data to life on the web for ordinary people. With its interactive visualizations and dashboards, Tableau Public helps people start conversations based on data that is useful, beautiful and shareable. No special plug-ins are required, all that’s needed to see and use the data is a web browser.

In conjunction with the general availability of Tableau Public, the company is also releasing today Version 5.1 of its Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server product suite. Version 5.1 provides more analytic richness, better publishing, and increased scalability and performance. Analytical features include reference bands that provide context to a user’s analysis, bullet charts to evaluate related data, and intelligent data labels to call out the most critical data. New publishing features include rich formatting, streamlined toolbar design, more filter options, and a flexible layout.

I have yet to try out the newest version, 5.1, but I did see that it will have the ability to produce Stephen Few’s famous Bullet Charts without any tricky workarounds.  I can tell you that I’m excited to start using version 5.1.

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In the February 1, 2010 edition of BusinessWeek, I found the illustration shown below.  It certainly contains some good information and data that can be easily read.  My question is, would you consider this a Information Visualization, Data Visualization, Information Graphic, Statistical Graphic, Chart/Graph or something else and why?

Sorry about all the polls lately, but I think this is an easy way to respond without having to comment. 

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Also, please feel free to comment with additional insights.

Note: RSS readers have to go to the website to view the poll.

Not too long ago, I got a tip from someone on Twitter with a link to a site called Verifiable.com.  Upon further investigation, I learned that this site is similar to Manyeyes.com in that you can upload a data set and, using the tools on the site, create data visualizations. 

At first glance, the site seems somewhat plain.  After digging into what the site is about, I quickly learned that they utilize sound and popular theory in the data visualization field.  On their about page, the first line that explains the features is:

“A clean, low-chartjunk philosophy — no shadows, no pie charts, no 3-D bar graphs, just the ink you need. [verifable.com]”

Well, simply reading that peaked my interest because they use similar principles that I follow when creating charts/graphs.  No frills.  I like the fact that you can create charts that don’t have excessive grid lines, shadows, weak labeling and limited charting options.  Below you will see a few examples from their site.  You can also follow the links to see the visualizations in an interactive environment.  As you will see, there is a lot of data (hover over), many different options and some good visuals.  Granted some of the charts I had no idea what they were trying to show, but in general this site gives you a seemingly good tool to apply charting/graphing best practices.

[Interactive version]

[Interactive version]

Verifiable also offers a Pro version of their tool where you can keep your data and visualizations private and receive premium support.  The cost is minimal with the Pro version going for $29.95/year. 

I didn’t try to upload a data set to give the site a full trial, but it definitely looks interesting.  I am not sure how much demand there is for online data visualization using a tool like Verifiable.

Back in December I wrote a post about using the arithmetic mean and median when analyzing data.  This is a follow up post that shares some insights from Naomi Robbins, author of Creating More Effective Graphs.  The following paragraph was Naomi’s response to my question, “what would you provide if asked what is a typical customer size?”

“I’d give the median together with the graph below. The graph, modeled after Figure 4.1 of Creating More Effective Graphs, shows all the data, as Jon suggested. I’d say something like:

"I provided the median (shown by the black line in the figure) rather than the mean (shown by the light cyan line) since as you can see from the figure, the mean is not a typical value. There are no actual customers who have revenues near to the mean value because customer 5 influences the mean so strongly since its revenues are so much higher than the others. Half of our customers have revenues less than the median while the other half have revenues greater than the median. The middle half of our customers have revenues that are between the dotted lines."

For a slightly larger customer base I’d jitter the points. For a much larger customer base I’d replace this strip plot (also called a one-dimensional scatter plot) with a box plot. By box plot, I mean a Tukey box plot. I object to every software program and every author redefining box plots so that the reader can’t read them without an explanation.

The figure was drawn with R. However, it is easy to reproduce it using Excel or other software. [Robbins]

I think this goes back to one of my original points, which was that many people just to provide the mean and it can be very misleading.  The graph above that Naomi provided illustrates this point clearly.  The light cyan line [mean] isn’t even close to the majority of the data points.  The median is much more representative of a typical customer value, but also not perfect.  Combine the median, mean, quartiles and actual values and now you’re providing real value.  Looking at this chart, it clearly shows the grouping of typical customers, outlier and where the median and mean fall.  Thank you Naomi for the insights!

If you are interested in providing a guest post, please contact me for more information or to submit a proposal.

Below is a great example of the wrong use of color in a column chart.  Use color to differentiate between segments, but don’t use it when time is on the x-axis for the different days.

A better use of color may be for each quarter within the year.  Using the chart below, it would make more sense to have every first week of the month always in one color, like blue.  Then, at least you could easily compare the first week of each month quickly.  I’m not even going to touch the chart title not matching to what is actually being displayed in the graph – days vs. weeks.

You really can’t make the color mistake if you used a line graph, just saying.

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I recently came across a few iPhone applications (Apps) that allow a user to view or edit spreadsheets in Excel.  Some have pretty good reviews and others, well, not so good.  I think there is some benefit to being able to view data visualizations, charts, graphs, spreadsheets and reports on your phone.  I think the capability is probably limited as it would be near impossible to do large scale spreadsheets on a phone.  Also, the screen size would limit the size and amount of data that could be displayed. 

Here are a few spreadsheet type apps for the iPhone:

• Quick Office
• ispreadsheet
• Mariner Calc

In my opinion, the best option is still to view web-published visualizations from a company like Spotfire or Tableau to see near real-time data, trends and visualizations.  Let’s forget about trying to build spreadsheets on your phone, because that isn’t going to happen.