Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Reaction: Effectively Communicating Numbers

The article elaboraltely describes the correct step by step procedure for representing information using graphs and charts. The author convincingly explains the importance of learning the visual design skills. Lack of which may result in miscommunication of business-critical data.Author agrees with the fact that Quantitative data can be best represented using tables,but he also focuses on how we can effectively represent categorical data (nominal, ordinal,interval) using graphs and charts.
Along with diffrent ways of representing data like time-series, ranking,part-to-whole, deviations etc, author has paid special attention to nuances of drafting a graph that we generally tend to ignore like color-scheme, placement of legends and variables along axis.A handy proclarity tool to determine the best means for encoding the quantitative business data is very useful for people dealing with numbers and graphs on daily basis. It briefly describes the potential encoding based on relationship type of data like time-series, ranking, part-to-whole etc. Author justifies his statement "the skills necessary to effectively communicate most quantitative business data don’t require a Ph.D. in statistics" by outlining 6 excellent decision making steps for delineating an effective visual representation for quantifiable/non-quantifiable data. Its a very informative read for large domain of target readers including layman, students, professionals as well as researchers.

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