this chart says...Zurich is expensive

The following was featured as the daily chart in the economist.com (full article here):



What other stories can you tell with this chart? What do you like? What would you change?

grables and taphs

graph + table = grable?

It seems to roll off the tongue better than taphs. 

The question is this: can you combine the visual power of a graph with the detail of a table? I think the answer is yes. Let's look at an example.

As I prepare for an upcoming webinar with the European Foundation Centre (EFC), I've been scouring the websites of European philanthropic organizations to understand how they are visualizing data currently. One item I came across was the following table, which is from the City Bridge Trust:

I know the text is small and hard to read. But then, that's part of the point - that you have to read it. That's one drawback of tables - because you have to read them to start to tease out information, you don't get the immediate ah ha! moment that can be so powerful with graphs. But it's sometimes hard to show as much detail in graphs as you can get cleanly with a table. For example, the table above would be a mess of uninterpretable data if you tried to put it all into a single graph. 

I'll go back to my original question: what if we can pair the immediate visual information you get with a graph with the detail of the table? Introducing the grable:

I think I like it... You get some immediate information in the shape of the bars. There's more info there to read to get all the detail. Perhaps this visual is giving us the best of both worlds? Or perhaps it's utterly confusing (what are bars doing in my table???)? What do you think? Can you imagine yourself using a grable? Be brutally honest. Leave me a comment with your thoughts.

If you're interested in how I made this happen from a tactical standpoint, you can check out my Excel file here.

learning from good visuals

I find I spend a lot of time here discussing less than stellar information visualizations and how they can be improved. But there is also much to be learned about data viz best practices by examining good visuals and understanding why they are effective. I paused on one such graphic last week (see original article):

Here's a quick rundown of what I like about the above visual:

• Everything is labeled (titles, axes, important values, data source), so there's no question about what you're looking at. The overall title explains what the visuals are intended to convince you of (so there's no guessing!). The points they want to highlight (2011) are shown clearly and draw attention through use of color-heavy call out boxes. 
• The use of color is intentional (not what a graphing application randomly chose); note how red means the same thing in both graphs: total. This consistency is important for easy comprehension.
• There isn't any extraneous stuff to dilute the audience's attention. Everything that's there is adding informative value.
• The visual hierarchy of information is clear. The data draws your attention through color; titles are bold so you can't help but know what you're looking at. Axis labels are less emphasized (but still clearly legible) with non-bold font. Sources and gridlines are there to help interpret the data, but are pushed to the background through size and weight so they don't compete visually with the data.
• Perhaps most importantly, the visual fits well with the article it accompanies. The graphs reinforce the main takeaways from the article and vice versa.

WSJ in general tends to have effective data representations, so if you're looking for more good examples, this is a great source. I still encourage you to maintain a critical eye when looking at any data visualization: observe what works well and what doesn't and try to emulate the effective parts in your own visuals.

Do you have any favorite sources for good data viz?