{"id":1881,"date":"2012-11-06T11:09:37","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T15:39:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/how-to-choose-the-right-chart\/"},"modified":"2013-09-25T08:05:20","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T12:35:20","slug":"how-to-choose-the-right-chart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/how-to-choose-the-right-chart\/","title":{"rendered":"How to choose the right chart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There’s a chart for every situation. Each type of information that you have and each analysis that you want to make can be benefited or harmed by the chart you choose.<\/p>\n

The idea of displaying data graphically is to help the other person understand what you mean to say<\/b>. Do you think sales are at risk? Do we have a problem in one of the regions? Help me see that information as clearly as you do.<\/p>\n

Pie charts are used to display the parts of a whole and the bar charts are used for comparisons.<\/b> Many people confuse them or feel tempted to display results with a pie chart. However humans are terrible at estimating areas. This slide from vovici<\/a> clearly tells the difference:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But there are customers that request a specific chart \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just because\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. To these persons I usually show this diagram from\u00a0Andrew Abela<\/a>\u00a0that helps you choose the right chart, according to the type of data that you have\u00a0(click to enlarge<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"choosing_a_good_chart\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Once you have the best type of chart, remember that every presentation needs to tell a story<\/a>.\u00a0What matters the most is that they understand and remember<\/b> what you meant to say. Therefore, your chart must help you narrate<\/a>, help you\u00a0stay focused on that story and prevent the data from getting lost in a poorly chosen chart.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nIn this other post<\/a>\u00a0I wrote a bit about how to prevent your data from getting lost within those fancy effects that, even though we like them, aren’t useful to make decisions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a chart for every situation. Each type of information that you have and each analysis that you want to make can be benefited or harmed by the chart you choose. The idea of displaying data graphically is to help the other person understand what you mean to say. Do you think sales are at… Continue reading How to choose the right chart<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[174,172,171],"tags":[198,197],"class_list":["post-1881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bestof","category-projectmanagement-en","category-sales","tag-charts","tag-visualization","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tlzy-ul","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1884,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/how-to-create-better-charts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1881,"position":0},"title":"How to create better charts","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"10\/11\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"We're often tempted to include some kind of accessorizing effect in our charts without knowing that deep down we're making them impossible to interpret and thus ruining their purpose. A typical case is the 3D pie chart. Many people, including executives, have a certain likeness for 3D charts. Somehow they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Best of"","block_context":{"text":"Best of","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/bestof\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Tufte-Chartjunk.png?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2020,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/zoomdata-bi-without-etl\/","url_meta":{"origin":1881,"position":1},"title":"Zoomdata: BI without ETL","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"29\/10\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This weekend I took a few minutes to test Zoomdata. And when I say minutes, I literally mean minutes. These guys have done an amazing job to provide a quick mobile-ready demo that you can download as a VM, or as I did, install from an RPM package in a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Project Mgmt."","block_context":{"text":"Project Mgmt.","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/projectmanagement-en\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"zoomdata","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/zoomdata.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/zoomdata.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/zoomdata.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/zoomdata.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1880,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/telling-stories-with-charts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1881,"position":2},"title":"Telling stories with charts","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"20\/10\/2012","format":false,"excerpt":"In\u00a0The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Tufte highlights Minard's famous graphic where the story of the lives (and deaths) of over 400,000 soldiers is told during Napoleon's invasion of Russia.\u00a0Tufte declares it the first infographic that combines geographical elements with time and temperature variables. But the most relevant aspect of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Project Mgmt."","block_context":{"text":"Project Mgmt.","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/projectmanagement-en\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Minard-Napoleon-Scan-600x286.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Minard-Napoleon-Scan-600x286.png?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Minard-Napoleon-Scan-600x286.png?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2082,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/amcharts-a-charting-library-for-creating-interactive-web-charts\/","url_meta":{"origin":1881,"position":3},"title":"amCharts, a charting library for creating interactive web charts","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"19\/05\/2014","format":false,"excerpt":"amCharts is a new JavaScript library for creating charts on the web. It handles many types of charts and it's somewhat reminiscent of D3.js. Its most exciting feature is a live editor, which removes the grunt work related to your typical JavaScript charting library and enables you to design, change\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Project Mgmt."","block_context":{"text":"Project Mgmt.","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/projectmanagement-en\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"amcharts","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/amcharts.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/amcharts.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/amcharts.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/amcharts.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2139,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/interactive-visualizations-javascript\/","url_meta":{"origin":1881,"position":4},"title":"Creating interactive visualizations of large datasets using JavaScript","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"09\/04\/2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Crossfilter is a JavaScript library initially designed by Square to explore large multivariate datasets in a web browser. It basically allows you to create sorted indexes and feed them to a charting library like D3, and enable the user to filter by clicking and dragging, even when sifting through 200.000\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Project Mgmt."","block_context":{"text":"Project Mgmt.","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/projectmanagement-en\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1973,"url":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/improve-sap-business-objects\/","url_meta":{"origin":1881,"position":5},"title":"How to improve your Business Objects charts","author":"Daniel Pradilla","date":"13\/08\/2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Business Objects, SAP's BI platform, is notoriously bad for data visualization. Somehow, it empowers the developers to make all the wrong decisions at the same time and create really ugly and unusable \"dashboards\". Lately, I've seen my share of ugly bobip visualizations, like the one above. Which would seem ok\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Project Mgmt."","block_context":{"text":"Project Mgmt.","link":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/category\/projectmanagement-en\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"disaster, disguised as a \"dashboard\"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Slide-5-SAP-BusinessObjects-4.0-Event-Insight2.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1881"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielpradilla.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}