Reaction: Effectively Communicating Numbers

This white paper on graph design is actually quite informative and also confusing, at times, due to the subtle points of distinction between, say, the different types of graph representation and which to use when. It introduces the reader to how to present and communicate data effectively in the business world especially, through tables and graphs. After reading through it, I came to know why and where I have been going wrong during presentations and this article is a good starting point for me to correct my unintended miscommunications uptil now.

I especially liked the six steps outlined for the process of decision making, which are very important for effective presentations. Also, the discussion on the seven types of relationships among quantitative business data was the main eye-catcher in my opinion. A couple of them were new to me, like the deviation and correlation relationships. So was the rule of when to use lines as compared to bars/points in graphs. Lastly, I found the article on design decisions for scales and text to be a bit redundant, in the sense that it reiterated what almost everyone follows while presenting graphs. Nevertheless, the whole paper is quite neatly presented which makes it easy to understand and will go a long way if we actually need to use such graphs during our project.