5 Rules of Effective Charting: Rules 1-2

Quick reference

• 00:05 I have no idea who Ashleigh Brilliant is.
• 00:07 But I found this quote on the internet one day, and I thought,
• 00:10 this really really crystallizes the way that some things are received in life.
• 00:15 And I know that I've certainly had this kind of an experience where I've built
• 00:19 something that I felt was really amazing.
• 00:21 And putting it out in front of my audience, they just couldn't grasp it.
• 00:25 One of the big challenges we have in this, though, is that when this happens,
• 00:29 as people who are here to convey information,
• 00:31 we really have to look in the mirror and say, well, is it them or is it me.
• 00:35 And even if it's them, we still have to find another way to make it work.
• 00:39 And for this reason, I've cooked up five rules for
• 00:42 effective charting will hopefully never get you to this particular place.
• 00:47 Rule number 1 is that every chart should tell a story.
• 00:50 Remember, the entire purpose of charting is to turn data into information so
• 00:56 that you can consume it as quickly as possible.
• 00:59 Remember, the job is to try and get in, get what you need and get out and
• 01:03 about that fast.
• 01:05 So in order to do this, you really need to sit down and think about what story is
• 01:10 it that you're trying to tell in the chart that you're building.
• 01:13 The more you can clarify this and
• 01:14 crystallize it before you start building your chart,
• 01:17 the more likely you're actually gonna get to the right place at the end.
• 01:21 Now, this is a little bit challenging when you start doing this for
• 01:24 the first couple of times.
• 01:25 But it does get easier over time.
• 01:26 But remember, really start to think about what am I trying to?
• 01:29 Am I trying to show that sales are increasing?
• 01:31 Am I trying to just show a global trend of something?
• 01:33 What is it that I want to convey?
• 01:36 If you're looking for that sales trend, you probably don't wanna necessarily be
• 01:39 focused if you're looking at sales trend at dollars versus budget,
• 01:42 you probably don't wanna focus and put units on the chart, right?
• 01:45 It's those kind of thing that you wanna really start thinking about.
• 01:49 Rule number 2 is to pick the right chart type.
• 01:52 And this one can be particularly challenging.
• 01:54 Take a look at this chart and ask which was the highest seller?
• 01:59 When I play this game in a live audience, I always ask them this and
• 02:03 ask them to give me an answer.
• 02:04 And it usually takes quite a long time with invariably most of the people coming
• 02:08 back and saying, well, it's dogs.
• 02:09 Okay, fair enough.
• 02:11 But when we start to roll into percentages, things start
• 02:14 to change because birds is 13% of the total, and dogs is 27% of the total.
• 02:19 And if you do the math on this,
• 02:20 there's no way at this point in time that dogs can be the largest seller.
• 02:24 It's impossible mathematically.
• 02:26 We roll this in a little further, and fishes are at 28%.
• 02:30 And now at 33%, we see cats.
• 02:32 So cats is the largest seller.
• 02:35 This is because of the way the chart is actually built.
• 02:38 It distorts the information that's being shown.
• 02:40 And this is actually built out of something that was actually put out in
• 02:43 a major US magazine, although with a different data series.
• 02:48 By contrast, I wanna give you a different view of the exact same data.
• 02:51 And take a look at this quickly and
• 02:53 really be honest with yourself, which one is more obvious?
• 02:56 If I were to put the chart on the right in front of you instead of the chart on
• 02:59 the left, you can get the answer in less than a second.
• 03:03 Hey, cats is the biggest.
• 03:04 Dogs is third.
• 03:07 And fish second.
• 03:08 And not only that, but
• 03:09 you can see the precise information that you need out of it as well.
• 03:13 The key part here, the reason why the chart on the right is so
• 03:16 much better is because it's the right chart type for the data.
• 03:19 In this particular case, you've got all of the information you need.
• 03:22 None of the information you don't, no extra noise is in the way,
• 03:25 you can actually get to that message right away.
• 03:27 So, working with four series, a tilted pie chart in 3D, not the right thing.
• 03:32 The right chart type is a bar chart.
• 03:35 Let's look at another one.
• 03:37 This one we're gonna actually look at who had the largest increase in sales.
• 03:42 So if you start working this one back and forward, you go, well,
• 03:45 cats is 33% in both years that's not gonna be it.
• 03:47 Fish has gone from 28 to 32.
• 03:50 Dogs actually went down.
• 03:51 Okay, so it's gotta fish.
• 03:52 Fish is the right one, its increased by 4%.
• 03:55 But the problem with this is that we mislead you with the wrong title.
• 03:59 Because in actual fact, what does a pie chart measure?
• 04:02 It measures the percentage of the whole.
• 04:05 This data is built off of this chart.
• 04:08 And when you look at this, and I ask you, who had the largest increase in sales,
• 04:13 you'll get past the misleading title after a bit and go, wait a minute,
• 04:16 you're lying to me.
• 04:16 This thing, actually everybody decreased except for fish stayed stable.
• 04:20 And that's kind of the key.
• 04:21 The title is important obviously,
• 04:23 because we can mislead someone to the wrong place right away.
• 04:26 But when you put the right chart type on this data,
• 04:29 you can't compare these two series with pies, even though people try.
• 04:33 But when you put the right chart type on this data,
• 04:35 you can see what really happened.
• 04:37 And this is one of the things that's key and
• 04:39 important when you're working with your data is to pick that right chart type.
• 04:45 Remember when you're doing this always.
• 04:47 The human brain does have trouble interpreting angles.
• 04:50 It's not what we're built for.
• 04:51 For that reason, we try to avoid pie charts and
• 04:53 we always skip the 3D chart options every single time.
• 04:58 Our brains however are extremely good with lines.
• 05:02 This is why bar charts and column charts are super intuitive because our brain can
• 05:05 pick up the difference in length between two lines just like that.
• 05:08 It's amazing.
• 05:09 So always whenever we get the chance, we should use bar charts and
• 05:13 line charts over pie charts.
• 05:15 That's a bit key takeaway.

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