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#1
02-01-2013, 11:47 PM
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Three charts are all I need
In everyday business intelligence (the “real world”), the focus isn’t on visualizing information, it’s on solving problems, and I’ve found that upwards of 95% of problems can be addressed using one of Three visualizations:
1. Spend your energy on selling the message, **t the medium One of the primary points of a visualization, as opposed to dumping raw data, is to distill a message for an audience that’s less familiar with both the content and the methodology involved. People have a limited ability to ingest information in a given window of time – would you rather they focus on the story you’re trying to tell with the visualization, or the substance of the visualization itself? Most people intuitively understand line charts and tables – you can safely put a well-constructed (with legends, labels, etc) time****** or summary table in front of most people and **t have to worry too much about whether or **t they understand the medium. Many people are familiar with the **tion of a histogram as well, but sometimes more explanation is required. It gets a little complicated, because a histogram becomes much more powerful when you pair it with an understanding of **rmal distributions, standard deviation, etc. Still, it’s **t a hugely complex thing to tackle – you can explain the visualization and the underlying concepts to a layperson in five or ten minutes. Almost anything more complicated than these Three takes some explanation. If it’s a really great chart, it should take less explanation and be worth it; my experience, however, is that in the vast majority of cases it’s **t worth the mental “tax” of new visualizations. 2. Your job is to solve a problem, **t make a picture The job of the New York Times graphics department is to tell a story using graphics, and they turn out some great work in pursuit of that goal. On the other hand, the job of an analyst for a business is to solve a problem and move on to the next one. You can spend days, weeks, or even months working on visualizations of data, but does that benefit the business most? In most cases, a simple visualization will get the job done and free you up to solve the next most pressing problem that the business has. 3. Safe doesn’t mean boring Just because these tools are well-worn doesn’t make them boring – you can do incredibly in**vative things just with line charts and histograms. One of my favorite charts that has been published here on Signal vs. **ise was a set of histograms comparing the time of git commits across the various people at 37signals (The rhythms of 37signals). This is **thing more than a stack of identically structured histograms, and it didn’t take a long time to make or require much explanation. What Three charts would you take with you on a desert island? أكثر... 
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