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Phil Simon

THE WORLD’S LEADING INDEPENDENT WORKPLACE COLLABORATION & TECH EXPERT

Dataviz: Interactivity Increases Understanding

A few more minutes of development can pay off in spades.
Mar | 12 | 2018

Mar | 12 | 2018
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Introduction

Maybe 20 years ago I could forgive laziness with data visualizations. After all, the “best” tools of the time weren’t nearly as powerful, affordable, and user-friendly as they are today. It’s a big emphasis in The Visual Organization and I feel as strongly about it as I did when I first penned the book.

In my analytics course CIS450, I devote an entire class to dataviz midway through the semester. In it, I cover the good, the bad, and the ugly. I conclude the class with an exercise. For about 20 minutes, I let the students find horrible examples of charts and graphs online. (To avoid duplication of efforts, I ban the first ten results of Google.)

Invariably, the students will find something along these lines:

Terrible, right? The figure above manifests only one thing: The U.S. spends far more on healthcare than just about any country. That’s it.

A Better Tool Yields Better Understanding

Consider how much easier it is to understand interactive dataviz tools such as the one below from The Chronicle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brXb90a0cic?rel=0

At a high level, a dataviz should convey, not confuse.

For perhaps thousands of schools, I can easily compare faculty salaries against a number of benchmarks. I can break down salaries by type of faculty and assess how schools value different positions. I could spend hours with this tool because it sates my curiosity and increases my understanding of how universities pay their faculty members.

Simon Says

With a nod to George Carlin, a dataviz should convey, not confuse. Rather than launch a static, incomprehensible tool, why not devote the time and resources to building one that accomplishes its goal?

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Blog E Data E Analytics E Dataviz: Interactivity Increases Understanding

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Blog E Data E Analytics E Dataviz: Interactivity Increases Understanding

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Related Posts

From Big to Small

Layoffs are all the rage these days. Microsoft, Zoom, Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce are just some of the companies that have let go of thousands of employees. Yet the labor market remains white hot. Unemployment is 3.4 percent. It's a question that I consider in The...

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0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *