I've been a fan of Edward Tufte for years. You may not recognize his name, but you've certainly seen his handiwork. He is the statistician who has made a profound impact on data visualization. This is the practice (to me, the art) of turning data into a visual feast of information.
There are some fine examples. Napoleon's March to Russia by Minard is a classic. As is the London Underground map. If you really want examples, you can spend some time and money checking them out here.
The New York Times has, in my opinion, one of the best data visualization teams in the news business. So much so that, after reading the Sunday NYTs, I'd often clip out the graphics page, put it in my bag, and bring it to the office to show everyone as example of what we needed to do in the business.
Here are two examples of what makes the NYT graphics so good.
You could see all of the foregoing represented in spreadsheets or lists. But I've got to believe that you got the point of both of these in a flash and, if you wanted to "drill down" into the detail you had no problem doing so.
And then there are some other fine example from the New York Times that, though not classically data visualization, nonetheless makes point across extraordinarily well. Here are three I particularly like:
- the 2011 Japan earthquake - before and after comparisons
- another before and after - the Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant
- a mashup of data visualization and sound - Radiolab
Besides being fun to look at, there's a serious point to all of this.
A manager in a business of any size knows that she spends a good portion of her time in meetings. As she rises in an organization - especially a very large one - meetings become the principal activity of her day. Whether conducted face-to-face, vie conference calls or Skype, executives are exposed to an enormous amount of data about the business. And it's typically presented in spreadsheets, lists and dashboards, all beautifully brought to life with the aid of PowerPoint.
The brain goes into overdrive to search out the meaningful cells in a spreadsheet (hint: they're not always the ones highlighted by the presenter) and to wade through the sea of red, yellow and green dashboards to figure out what is really working, and what is not.
Such devices are necessarily abstract (and often misleading) representations of the state of the business, the health of the organization's connection with its customers, and the prognosis for the future.
I've sat in many a meeting like this, and my retinas have easily received the light from 50,000 spreadsheets and slides cast on them. If you're anything like me, the brain begins to rune out after awhile. Probably some neurological reaction to stay sane, if nothing else. Jack Welch had the same aversion. So did Lou Gerstner (though he was less polite than Jack about it).
Every once and a while, though, I can recall someone presenting a complex bit of data all wrapped up in one ingeniously simple and elegant slide. Not as flashy as the folks from NYT can serve up, but pretty good nonetheless. And, best as I can recall, those who drew the shortest, simplest and clearest path to their point usually prevailed.
If you need further convincing then perhaps Tufte's poster makes the point.
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