I'll be hosting a Data Visualization workshop at the Digital Media Marketing Conference in St. Louis, Missouri on Thursday. Here is the link to their website. The workshop is arranged from three themes: Appreciating, Conceptualizing, and Improving. There will be...
The following Wall Street Journal caught my eye the other day: (Link to article) Looking closely, I realize that the four charts are identical, except for the call-outs. This is a kind of small-multiples in which the same data reside...
In my latest piece for Harvard Business Review (link), I tackle this common problem in the interactions between data scientists and business managers: A typical big data analysis goes like this: First, a data scientist finds some obscure data accumulating in a server. Next, he or she spends days or weeks slicing and dicing the numbers, eventually stumbling upon some unusual insights. Then, a meeting is organized to present the…
The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) has put out its Big Data report last month (link). This one is worth reading. It has some of the most current citations, and readers of this blog will be very receptive to its core messages. The team who wrote the report is a mix of academics and practitioners. *** In Big Data, there are many self-evident truths, according to the people…
It’s a happy day when one of my favorite chart types, the Bumps chart, makes it to the Wall Street Journal, and the front page no less! (Link to article) This chart shows the ground shifting in global auto production...
Reader Michael N. calls this an "unusual" marketing bar chart--because the designer distorted the data in a way that weakens, rather than strengthen, the story! The infographic is pitching savings if the family switches to Republic. The savings is about...
I discovered Hans Rosling's Gapminder work when I first started Junk Charts almost ten year ago, with this series of posts. So I was very excited to meet Hans yesterday at the Data, Children and Post-2015 Agenda Event hosted by the UNICEF Data and Analytics Section. And he gave a marvellous talk. I came away touched in equal parts by his humanity, the animated passion for his subject, and the…
I answered some questions from KDnuggets. Here is Part 1 of the interview. They picked this image.
I am a guest at the New School's Journalism + Design program this semester. The students conducted interviews about the question of what makes someone famous. Their interviewees were asked to name five famous people. We had images of these people up on the wall. Then, we put the pictures into clusters. We tried two different ways of doing it. At the end, we compared our result to what a…
Last week, Wall Street Journal inverted the vertical axis in one of their charts. The last time someone did this, a huge uproar ensued. (The Florida gun deaths chart discussed here.) This time, the act appeared to have caused barely...
