I got the vanishing point wrong all the time...

data51026577-a507c5.jpg …

How to create a waterfall chart

Data visualization … adjustments to make it fit your specific set of numbers. Also, you will need to add data labels manually …

The unit measure

Data visualization …

Visualizing contrasts

Data visualization …

Investment bank memos

Data visualization … with data. "Last year's sales were x, growth for the 3rd quarter was y, the company is doing … do not work for me. The journalist took the data tables and graphs and translated them into words … Investment bankers usually prepare the data rooms for due diligence in M&A transactions. Shelves …

Mary Meeker slide makeover

Data visualization … difficult to link to the data series, I moved them to the right I made the mobile data series pop … more with stronger colouring I stretched the data chart a bit horizontally to use the maximum …

Keeping things up to date

Data visualization … data chart from scratch, 100% focused on the audience, not the analyst. How to deal with the … correctly, and most spreadsheets are not build to present data, they are build to analyse it. Hence … , LP updates of VC/PE funds, the latest sales data. Updating the numbers is time consuming and errors … cutting and pasting Excel data into PowerPoint. You need serious PowerPoint skills to format the data … Some presentations contain a ton of data that needs to be updated all the time. Quarterly results …

Good and bad use of data charts

Data visualization … 1,800,232,433). The growth trajectory is clear (without cheating with broken axes). Real data and projection … Good and bad use of data charts … minimalist with a huge data label to communicate and visualise the one number we need to know (could have … phone). Like in most infographics, the rules of creating data charts are broken. It works well in the 2 …

Graph screen shots

Data visualization … the better), measure the position of the data points and recreate the chart from scratch in PowerPoint … If you do not have access to the source data of a graph you have two approaches to getting the data … When you do not use data labels in a chart (bar, column, line) but rely on a value axis instead, you …

Overdoing the animations

Data visualization … , drop shadows, small data labels, and ambiguous labelling ("Internet", "mobile", "video", etc.). … you see the pie chart changing for multiple years. This data can be represented much better by a …

Table or bar chart?

Data visualization … simple table. Stick all the data in, round things up nicely, and use accent/shading background … have lots and lots of data to present (the data labels just become too small), I resort back to a … Back in the good old days at McKinsey, we tend to put any range of data in a column or bar chart … beautifully to visualise a data range. Especially if there are big differences between the values of …

Confusing ranges

Data visualization … double the amount of data labels, and/or double the amount of text in tables It becomes hard to work … A large of the data presented in business presentations is uncertain: future forecasts, market …

Cleaning up survey results

Data visualization … to the original research data in a spreadsheet to find patterns, trends that have not been put in … important insight? A segmentation or cut is not always meaningful, sometimes data points do not actually … . There is meaning in 2 levels. Level 1 is to discover what trends the data displays (not always … them from scratch with just the data you need): Move non-essential statistical lingo/jargon/details … Quantitative market research companies come back with pages and pages and pages of data in …

Domino visualisation in a column chart

Data visualization …

The lone column

Data visualization …

The only data charts you need

Data visualization … more and more types of data charts. Pie charts: I don't like the way they look, it has to place … The only data charts you need … very limited arsenal of data charts. Here is a quick run down of the ones I use: columns, stacked … data labels, it is hard to compare two of them side by side Line charts have ver little presence (duh … and hard core scientific data I might have to resort to them Clustered column charts, I find them … good data charts is careful, manual design (the opposite of copy pasting from a spreadsheet). What is …

US maps with statistics

Data visualization … The recently joined web site Data USA (datausa.io) is a great source of maps that can serve as backgrounds for presentation slides. …

One science is harder to explain than another

Data visualization …

Grasping data charts

Data visualization … Grasping data charts … "what is actually happening" and only put that piece of data on the chart. For example if a complex … analysis then you live and breathe the data in the chart, the only thing you watch out for is how … new audience it is a different story. There are 2 types of data charts: Charts to ponder and refine … Here is what a first time viewer needs to go through when looking at a data chart: What's the unit … can replace all that monthly visitor data with 3 data points: % of return visitors in the last 3 years. Image by Phil Roeder on Flickr …

Tedious number updates

Data visualization … . Create data charts, fix fonts, colors, etc. exactly as in the PowerPoint file. Format Excel cells exactly … present are often so simple (only one data series, rounded digits) that I tap them in by hand. There is …