Category Archives: charts & graphs

07b-Using good information design, 99-Applying business intelligence, 99-Spreadsheet modeling, charts & graphs, tables

What is the Best way to Pull data from the Internet? #GrowthHacking

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A lot of times we find ourselves in the need to pull a database of information online, but copy and pasting (for example a government database) would take too long.  This forces us to either abandon the data infusion that might give us great insight or to make bad assumptions.

As with many of these types of problems there is a startup working on it.  This specific problem is solved by Import.io.  Their slogan is:

Web Data Extraction Made Easy,  Transform any website into a table of data or a Structured API in minutes without even writing any code.

This software really does what it says and is super simple to use.   Turn any website domain or page into an excel document!  While this is probably a big win in productivity for a lot of us, dont miss the big picture.  There are a bunch of these type of programs available that will make your work easier, but, often times they are either hard to find or we are just not aware that there is a solution for it.

I recommend everyone sign up for these services two newsletters: Product Hunt and Beta List.  They will keep you on the bleeding edge of whenever a new problem solving software comes out!

 

 

 

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, 07d-Delivering a presentation, charts & graphs, clearing slides, PowerPoint resources, PowerPoint tricks, slide-craft, story-boarding, storyline structure, tables

Edward Tufte on PowerPoint

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This is an interesting read on the pitfalls associated with PowerPoint presentations. One of the things that I am focusing on improving this semester is my presentation skills, and I found this article, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward Tufte, to be helpful with regards of how to present data in a meaningful way. While you may find some of his opinions to be extreme, I believe that he still has many valid points and that his arguments are logical.

Even if you do not read this entire article, at least see his demonstration of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address via PowerPoint presentation on page 12 along with the section on improving our Presentations on page 22. I’ve included some highlights of the article below:

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

PP convenience for the speaker can be costly to both content and
audience. These costs result from the cognitive style characteristic of the standard default PP presentation: foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, a deeply hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narrative and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis, conspicuous decoration and Phruff, a preoccupation with format not content, an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.

Extremely Low Resolution of PowerPoint 

Visual reasoning usually works more effectively when the relevant information is shown adjacent in space within our eyespan. This is especially the case for statistical data, where the fundamental analytical act is to make comparisons.

Bullet Outlines Dilute Thought

By leaving out the narrative between the points, the bullet outline ignores and conceals the causal assumptions and analytic structure of the reasoning.

Bullet outlines might be useful in presentations now and then, but sentences with subjects and verbs are usually better. Instead of this type of soft, generic point found in many business plans.

Improving Our Presentations

Designer formats will not salvage weak content. If your numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.

Never use PP templates for arraying words or numbers. Avoid elaborate hierarchies of bullet lists. Never read aloud from slides. Never use PP templates to format paper reports or web screens.

Paper handouts at a talk can effectively show text, numbers, data graphics, images. Printed materials, which should largely replace PP, bring information transfer rates in presentations up to that of everyday material in newspapers, magazines, books, and internet screens.

 

07b-Using good information design, 07c-Telling stories, charts & graphs, creativity methods, Uncategorized

Information Design For Dummies

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This title is clearly tongue-in-cheek, but for me, “For Dummies” can be applied to several areas of mine that need improvement. I suppose those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to practice every viable business skillset regularly may feel the same. But hey, isn’t that why we’re in school? Isn’t that the nature of this project? I digress….

Presentations haven’t been a focus of career thus far, so even the term Information Design is something relatively new. In trying to gain expertise and understanding quickly, I always like to start at the beginning. Where did Information Design originate? What’s its purpose? How is it best used today? To quote professor Makadok, “I’m energized! I’m ready to learn!”

The term “information design” originated in the early 1990’s, however humans have been using visual aids to tell stories for a very long time (think cave paintings, hieroglyphics, etc.). Formal Information Design really hit its stride in the 18th century, with innovators like William Playfair creating some groundbreaking representations of data (http://www.humantific.com/making-sense-of-the-early-sensemakers). Playfair, a Scottish engineer and political economist, invented pie charts, line graphs, and bar charts. And you thought Scotch whisky was Scotland’s greatest invention! All kidding aside, Playfair’s charts were beautiful representations of imports and exports, giving life to previously abstract statistics.Playfair13-525x306

The evolution continued, and fast forward to 20th century: Harry Beck, an English technical draftsman creates the famous London Underground tube map in 1931 (http://britton.disted.camosun.bc.ca/beck_map.jpg).

beck_map

As a map lover, this is truly an iconic work, and set the standard of urban transit maps that we all know today. To me, Beck’s work truly achieves one of the key goals of information design: clearly visualizing something that is difficult to understand. Can you imagine the complexity of an actual map of the London Underground in its correct scale? It would likely look like an angry cluster of snakes. Beck’s map breaks down the complexity into something that even a novice traveller can visually digest over a cup of tea and a scone.

So with a little history under our belt, what are some tips for taking a modern approach to Information Design? Amy Balliett of Smashing Magazine wrote a fantastic article that gives some great examples of do’s and don’ts, that we can all use to approach our next presentation (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/14/the-dos-and-donts-of-infographic-design/):

1) Show, don’t tell: Don’t miss an opportunity to visualize data. In other words, avoid putting into text what can better be conveyed with an image, chart, or graph.
2) If the client wanted an excel chart, they wouldn’t need you: This is clearly aimed at professional info designers, but you get the idea. Step your game up, and get creative! If possible, learning some design platform could really differentiate your skills from the rest of the pack.
3) Typography should not be a crutch: avoid leaning too heavily on fancy fonts that distract from the visualized data. I think this is great advice, and reflects back to “show, don’t tell.”

She goes on to make several other good points, but I’ll get right to the good stuff…

4) Tell a story: Funny how it always comes back to a good story. Great info graphics introduce a problem, back it up with data, and finish with a conclusion.

I highly recommend reading Ballet’s entire article, and hopefully it will provide some inspiration next time you attempt to convey a message visually. Now where did I put that Scotch?

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, 99-Spreadsheet modeling, charts & graphs, Excel resources, PowerPoint resources, PowerPoint tricks, slide-craft, tables

Sharing a Helpful Resource

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If your job is anything like mine, you use Microsoft Excel and/or PowerPoint on a regular (if not daily) basis. If you use either of these applications in conjunction with each other (which I know all of us have in our prior MP presentations), I have a very helpful resource to share with you.

One of the biggest challenges that I have faced is effectively incorporating data (particularly from Excel) into a concise PowerPoint presentation. Given that Excel and PowerPoint are both made by Microsoft, you would think that using these two applications in conjunction with one another would be fairly seamless and potentially even synergistic (1 + 1 = 3, right?).  However, integrating Excel and PowerPoint is not always straight forward, and conveying key takeaways rather than “data dumping” an entire financial model into your presentation can be a challenge. Additionally, I think that most of us are typically better at one than the other which doesn’t make things any easier.  I certainly have found this to be the case for myself, and while I have a strong background in using Excel, I have a lot of “room to grow” in terms of incorporating financial data from huge bulky models into a clean and concise presentation that conveys the underlying data effectively.

As I have searched for tools, resources, and articles giving guidance on this very topic, I have come across a particularly helpful website that I wanted to share with our class and hope that you will find it to be as useful as I have. This website is called ‘Think Outside the Slide’ and is as close to a “one stop shop” as I have found for guidance on just about everything relating to creating powerful presentations, with literally thousands of articles neatly organized by topic, as well as video tutorials if you’re more of a visual person. If you use Excel or PowerPoint at all, there is likely a specific article with tips and guidance on how to more effectively use the applications in a context relevant to you.

These are just a few that I have begun to frequently reference to give you a snapshot:

  • Using Excel Data in Powerpoint Presentations
  • Slide Design, Creation, and Editing
  • Linking Excel Data (and other content) to PowerPoint so that data in slides automatically updates
  • Tips on effectively cleaning up and animating graphs
  • Creating powerful visuals using Excel Data (waterfall graphs, diverging stacked bar charts, treemap diagrams, proportional shape comparisons, etc…)

For many business professionals, myself included, Excel and PowerPoint are critical tools, and learning to use data effectively in PowerPoint presentations can take time but is versatile skill with application to countless professions that can help to distinguish yourself from your peers/co-workers, and add value to your clients. I hope you find this to be a helpful resource, please feel free to share any other resources that you frequently use and have found helpful in your career. Thanks!

Helpful links referenced in this post:

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/free-resources/

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/using-excel-data-in-a-powerpoint-presentation/

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/articles/

07b-Using good information design, charts & graphs, tables

Attention, Cleanup on Slide 6.

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Engineers like numbers. Engineers like problems that can be solved with numerical analysis. Engineers like when others agree that their numbers are correct. However, all too often Engineers fail to clearly communicate their ideas, analysis, and solutions in a manner that quickly informs, educates, and persuades their audiences. I would know; I am an Engineer.

Presenters commonly overlook good information design in their presentations. Instead, they focus on providing the maximum amount of information and data in a manner that allows the audience to fully appreciate not only the solution but also the process of the analysis. In their attempt to wow the audience with slides dominated by tables, charts, graphs, best-fit lines, major and minor grid lines and the like, they instead produce confusion and lack of interest. I will be the first to admit that I am guilty of such techniques.

In Edward Tufte’s work on information design, “Visual Display of Quantitative Information” – yes it is indeed as interesting as it sounds – Tufte discusses Data-Ink and Graphical Redesign. In order to achieve maximum impact, Tufte outlines five principles for data graphics that can lead to significant improvements in graphical design: 1) Above all else show the data, 2) Maximize the data-ink ratio, 3) Erase non-data-ink, 4) Erase redundant data-ink, and 5) Revise and edit. To help clarify, Tufte describes data-ink as “the share of the ink on a graphic that presents the data-information”; it is “the non-erasable core of the graphic.” The key and the challenge of this topic is finding simplicity.

Tufte provides a great example of how to erase redundant data-ink within reason. Consider a simple bar chart with a single bar that is shaded and displays the value of the data point at the top of the bar. The height or value of the bar chart in this simple example is identified in six separate ways. Five of those ways can be considered redundant and removed, and the important data will still be present. The six ways include, 1) the height of the left vertical of the bar chart, 2) the height of the right vertical of the bar chart, 3) the height of the shaded region of the bar chart, 4) the vertical position of the horizontal top of the bar chart, 5) the vertical position of the value on top of the bar chart, and 6) the numeric value itself. Removing redundant information creates clearer presentation and more effective communication of a presenter’s ideas.

For most, this is likely not the most exciting of topics. However, for someone who works heavily in numerical analysis and who must convey outcomes to audiences of varying backgrounds, these suggestions on good information design are priceless. Does anyone else struggle in the area of good information design? Have you ever been complimented on your information design? Any other suggestions of how someone can improve their ability to display quantitative information?

 

Tufte, Edward R. “Data-Ink and Graphical Redesign.” The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Second ed. Cheshire, CT: Graphics LLC, 2006. N. pag. Print.