Friday, January 8th, 2010
Void of color
Today’s topic is a practical self-help lesson. It is safer to fly than to visualize the safety of flying. Colors have a lot to do with that. What can we learn from this? We don’t have to color everything.
Friday, December 25th, 2009
One figurine, one person
Whether it’s Barbie and Ken, Madame Tussaud, Playmobil or even the ‘Männleinlaufen’ in Nuremburg – people as figurines are either fun or educational. But as we can see from the following examples and exceptions, the exact opposite usually holds true for data visualization.
Friday, December 11th, 2009
Knecht Rupprecht Murdoch
Handelsblatt and the Wall Street Journal Europe, which are affiliated through a mutual cooperation, have recently relaunched their publications. Unfortunately, both instances are not exactly good news for our information culture. We’ll explain why in part 1 of our two-part series.
Friday, November 27th, 2009
Absolutely correkt
Proofreading is just as important in charts as it is in texts – and there are plenty of examples to prove that. When it comes to presenting data, however, we also need to remember that the real value comes from good content in the proper format.
Friday, November 13th, 2009
Paraskavedekatriaphobic considerations
Today, we’ll prove how useful data analysis truly is by answering a very current question: Should we even leave the house on this Friday the 13th, for example, to go analyze data?
Friday, October 30th, 2009
Hearing impaired renders you shortsighted
Hearing is one of our most powerful senses. We can close our eyes but
not our ears. If we want to take data analysis to the next level, we must also use our sense of hearing. Anything else would be rather shortsighted.
Friday, October 16th, 2009
Say 1,000 words about your picture
Minard’s famous graphic of Napoleon’s Russian campaign tells the striking story of disaster. Like all graphics, however, it can only capture a fraction of the overall events. What can we do to combat that?
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
No peaceful peaks
Not every summit is a reason for optimism. And that’s exactly the problem when people are careless with line charts, which is generally the case. Here is an exception.
Friday, September 18th, 2009
Carved into stone: rhetoric in politics
Controllers are a lot like politicians. They don’t just want to spot and examine issues, they also want to take action and change things. To do that, they need more than convincing numbers – they need to find the right words as well.
Friday, September 4th, 2009
Needless needles
Design aid: We can use analog displays to synchronize some very sophisticated actions. And we can learn them more easily than robots can. But can gauges point managers in the right direction?
