“If the statistics are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers.”
― Edward Tufte (pioneer of data visualization )
Bar-charts and pie-charts tend to be the most used charts, personally I am a fan of Venn diagrams.
I wish I had this graph when I was at school.
Another favourite:
Choosing the right graph to present data can be difficult. We tend to use pie-charts because they look visually interesting in PowerPoint presentations, but pie-charts are usually the wrong choice, as they:
- force us to compare areas (or angles), which can be difficult,
- people tend to only compare the biggest two or three wedges and
- they take up a lot of space to be readable.
This poster can be helpful for deciding on a more appropriate kind of graph (click to enlarge):
Alss this following website not just helps with the selection of the graph type but also provides templates to download (free, no signup) in PowerPoint and Excel.
http://labs.juiceanalytics.com/chartchooser/index.html
