I’ve attached two simple graphs (and data) that illustrate my attempts to display progress (or ‘direction of travel’) made by clients in a service. They were assessed when they come into the service, and again when they exit, in seven different areas. I’ve attached two graphs as examples (one specific to an mental health, the other is a summary across the seven assessment areas).

They’re fairly simple graphs, but they don’t allow the reader to quickly grasp if clients made ‘good’ progress.

I want readers to quickly discern whether clients who entered with poor mental health made positive progress or not.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks,

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Since the timeframe is only 24h, and the breakdown is hourly, we can’t really call it “trend”, therefore I’m not comfortable with using line chart. A line chart is supposed to show trend, and the lines that connect the data points are supposed to have a meaning (increase means increase, decrease means decrease, and if I see an increase/decrease in my data it means I did something good/wrong).

But here, if one hour has less clicks than the previous one, it’s not meaningful (trend-wise) as a day-over-day trend, because we know that there are peak hours, not all the hours are expected to perform the same, etc. It doesn’t mean anything.

So the meaningful comparison is not between the hours, but between same hours in different days. That’s why I added a comparison of each hour to:
– same hour at the same day, 1 week ago
– last 30d average of this hour

I have a dilemma between 2 charts: lines and columns. The line chart, as I said, feels irrelevant because the trend is not the interesting thing here. However, the column chart that looks right to me data-viz-wise, with 1 column for today, 1 lighter column for last week, and an horizontal line (“score bar”) for the monthly average, looks overwhelming (24*2 columns are a lot!! I’m not the only one who thinks it’s really crowded, right?).

You can see here in the photos examples for both of the chart types (also with smaller photos that show what happens on hover, not that important but I just added them for fun).

I would really appreciate any opinion or of course – new suggestions.
Thanks!

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I’m trying to elevate my control chart to the ‘next level’ by applying the Nelson 5 statistical rules. In other words, I want to be able to highlight the points on the graph that display the Nelson statistical rules. Would you be able to help assist?

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Getting the formatting in your chart right can make the difference between clear, concise information and just a pretty picture.

Take a look at this stacked column chart using some of the built in Excel chart formats:….

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Have at it and thanks.

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In August, Vox.com published The Truth about the Ice Bucket Challenge and included an infographic (“Where We Donate vs. Diseases That Kill Us”) that used proportionally-sized circles as its data visualization. The problem with this design was that the circle sizes didn’t match the values shown. This is a false visualization and significantly over exaggerated the smaller amounts of money contributed to each charity and the deaths attributed to each cause. The designer made the mistake of adjusting the diameter of circles to match the data instead of the area, which incorrectly sizes the circles dramatically.

To demonstrate, I designed a corrected version of the infographic and posted it on Cool Infographics®, which you can see here side-by-side next to the original. To stay close to the original, I only made three changes: corrected circle sizes, eliminated the color legend and added the connecting lines to help readers make the direct comparisons.

The Google Docs spreadsheet of the original data and correct circle area and diameter calculations is available here. To their credit, Vox.com has also published a corrected version of the infographic in the original article.

The first step was to get the bubble chart data visualization correct. Now that we have an infographic that matches the data presented, we can step back and ask the hard questions.

• Is a bubble chart the best way to visualize this information?

• Is this the right data to show when comparing money raised to deaths by diseases?

From Twitter, @indented recreated the visual as a scatterplot using HighCharts to more clearly show the large differences. (The interactive is available here.)

Jon Schwabish (@jschwabish) also created a scatterplot version, but changed the data to compare individual fundraising events to National Institute’s of Health funding, and then size the bubbles by the number of deaths. (The interactive is available here).

We (myself, @indented, and @jschwabish) had an interesting Twitter discussion about this visualization and the challenges of using the various data sources.

Looking for other options and options about how this data can be improved, or visualized better…

Additional resources:

This Bubble Chart Is Killing Me, David Mendoza

Where Should Our Money Go?, Aneesh Karve

One of the worst infographics ever, but people don’t care?, Phil Price

Ice buckets, research and the cost of disease, Scienceogram UK

NIH Spending Versus Diseases That Kill Us, Mohammed AlQuraishi

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So, is the bubble chart the best way to show the data? Does the interactivity help? How can it be improved?

I pulled the data from this Google spreadsheet provided by OpenSecrets.org in a write-up posted yesterday.

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the story you want to tell…and the one your data shows

I was working on a makeover for a recent workshop when it became apparent that the story being told wasn’t quite right, or at least wasn’t exactly the story I would tell after looking at the data in a couple of different ways. In the following post, I’ll walk you through an anonymized version of the makeovers and my corresponding thought process. Continue Reading…

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Most entries in the Gallery will be re- or cross-posted from other websites; others will be HelpMeViz originals produced by experts in the field of data visualization. For those re- or cross-posts, introductory text will also appear with a “Continue Reading” button that will bring you to the original remake. The “before” images will be posted on the HelpMeViz main page with a blue “Remake” banner. Entries will also appear in the “Remake Gallery” category for easier filtering.

If you would like your remake to appear in the HelpMeViz Remake Gallery, please send an email to HelpMeViz@gmail.com.

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