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A bubble chart forecasting the supply of and demand for recycled plastic in 2030. Source: McKinsey & Company.
There are lots of wrong ways to add visual interest to charts. McKinsey shows us the right way.
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Figure 1 from the book Atomic Habits, showing that if you improve at something 1% every day for a year you’ll be 37.78 times better at that thing by the end of the year. Source: Amazon.
James Clear has sold 15 million copies of a book that apparently contains nothing but made-up charts and graphs.
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We think square pie charts are amazing. McKinsey & Company agrees.
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An Emarketer chart claiming a market will grow eightfold in five years, but showing ninefold growth in four years. Source: Emarketer.
One day soon you’ll be glad you did.
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Screenshot of the Berlin Founders Fund Masterclass webinar titled “How Data Drives Your Success.” Source: Berlin Founder Fund.
Want lots of detail on best practices for creating, depicting, and explaining data? Look no further.
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A pie chart designed from a cut-up pork pie, showing slices for “Partygate inquiry,” “Revolting Tory MPs,” and “End of COVID rules.” The chart doesn’t apparently contain any data, just political arguments. Source: The Sun.
You can’t make a data visualization with actual data. Or at least, you shouldn’t. The Sun shows us why not.
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Chart showing that people read area-based pie charts as accurately as traditional pie charts, but make large errors when estimating angles. Source: eagereyes YouTube channel.
Research shows that square pie charts work great and that visual weight really matters.
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A pie chart in which every slice is a different height; some slices are more than 5 times taller than other slices. Source: Unnamed Nineteen Insights client.
Last week, data graphics tool Infogram tricked one of my clients into making the worst pie chart I’ve ever seen.
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Square pie chart showing carbon emissions by country in 2017. Source: OurWorldInData.org | CC-BY.
Companies commit awful sins when they create round pie charts. Square pie charts offer several advantages.
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Florence Nightingale’s “rose diagram,” two modified pie charts showing deaths in the British Army during the Crimean War.
Florence Nightingale wasn’t just a nurse; she was a data geek who used charts as a weapon.
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Seven bar charts with almost no labels. Image source: Sprinklr blog
Sprinklr thoroughly violated the Golden Rule of Charts and Graphs — then asked The Good Data Project for advice.
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Data table with some cells highlighted. Source: Gartner, “7 Key Marketing Channel Shifts as Marketing Budgets Shrink.”
The research firm mislabeled its own data table — and then made a 2-point difference appear bigger than a 15-point difference.
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A “bar chart” that uses bubbles in place of bars. Source: Salesforce.
Done well, creative graphics can bring ideas to life. Done poorly, creative graphics can make it impossible for readers to understand the facts.
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BuzzSumo bar chart without data labels. Image source: Brandwatch/BuzzSumo.
Adding labels to your data isn’t just a meaningless rule; it’s essential to a chart’s very purpose.
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Facebook chart titled “Teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse.” Image source: Wall Street Journal.
Few companies make better data graphics than Facebook. But few companies violate the golden rule more often.
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A sample pie chart with two slices: 36.0% and 64.0%. Source: The Good Data Project.
If you want to include decimals in your charts and graphs, make sure you have a good reason. Because most of the time they just get in the way.
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Line chart of deaths per day due to Covid-19 in British Columbia. Image source: CBC.
You can find a lot of bad data graphics about Covid-19. Fortunately, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has made some very good ones.
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Seven bar charts with almost no labels. Image source: Sprinklr blog
Software vendor Sprinklr went public in June, and is now valued at $4.5 billion. But the company recently published a pile of data charts without labels, and those aren’t worth a dime.
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Image credit: Excerpt from Unlucky Haiti (1981-2010) by Jer Thorp | CC BY-SA 2.0
When I help clients build data graphics I give the same advice over and over. I've come to think of it as the Golden Rule of Charts and Graphs:
Display all the data you need to tell an honest story, and no more.
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Image credit: Some cheerful data by dirkcuys | CC BY-SA 2.0
I can’t think of anything more important than data. Good data tells stories that illuminate the world around us. Bad data confuses and obscures.
Unfortunately there’s a lot more bad data in the world than good.
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