Matt Parker describes what happens when spreadsheets go wrong in the BBC's "More or Less: Behind the Stats" podcast. I've been writing about this for over a decade and, sadly, little progress had been made. The cartoon is from xkcd, obviously. … [Read more...]
10 ways to mislead with data visualization
PolicyViz have published a useful article on errors you really need to avoid when creating data visualizations. … [Read more...]
Dutch giants
This chart crime made me afraid to visit Amsterdam. https://twitter.com/AdamSinger/status/1612124828114321410 I had to rework it to stop the nightmares. Phew. Everyone looks normal now. … [Read more...]
Percentages or proportions?
Don't store percentages. Normalize them as proportions and format them as percentages for display. If you are representing 20%, record it as 0.2, regardless of how you present this to the user (for input or output). Having one approach keeps it simple. … [Read more...]
Data storytelling
If you pay too much attention to social media these days, it appears that we're failing our clients if we don't present data as a narrative. Data storytelling is where it's at. Dataviz (data visualization) is so last year. This view does a disservice to both dataviz and data storytelling. It fails to appreciate the range of dataviz applications and, by watering down the definition of data … [Read more...]