Category Archives: tables

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, charts & graphs, PowerPoint resources, slide-craft, story-boarding, tables

Being Intentional with your Data and Giving your Graphics a Voice!

August 14, 2014 Sahar Salek Leave a comment

I have a particular interest in evaluation in the workplace– the evaluation of employees, work output, employers, etc. In the types of programs I’ve been in, I have found in very useful. However, I’m sure that most companies don’t have the time to thoroughly evaluate their work in a systematic and organized way. I have always worked in the research/higher education end of business, and so I don’t personally have experience with how evaluation works in the corporate setting. How does evaluation look like in your industry or company?

A few years ago, I came across this site and I have been a fan ever since. The group is called Evergreen Data and they focus on intentional reporting and data visualization. I work in public health/higher education, and the public health industry is very data-heavy. Data in public health is used for analysis, program planning, grant opportunities, research, etc. and so I have seen the benefits of its use in my industry. What does your company do with its evaluation data?

This particular site had a checklist on how you should layout your evaluation reports which I’ve found super helpful! The purpose of the checklist is to help identify what parts of an evaluation report can be enhanced through the use of graphics.

Here are some of the items they had in their checklist:

Text font and size (sans serif and size 9-11)
Text uniformity
Line spacing (between 11-13 points)
Headers/callouts
The number of different types of fonts that you should use (no more than three!)
Don’t make too “strong” or “bold” of bullet points
Alignment (be consistent!)
Make sure that items in page that are grouped together are related
Utilize white/empty space!
Use of pictures/graphics – individuals learn differently from one another
Use color changes for a purpose (are you being intentional by choosing to change the color of a font or header?)

Evergreen also has an additional checklist that’s used for data visualization. It’s specific to making your graphs speak for themselves! This is a great resource as well.

What are some of the tips you have when creating reports (not exclusive to evaluation reports)? What steps do you take to have your data share a “story” or a “point”? Are you intentional in your decisions in terms of report layouts, font, graphics, etc.? Do you find that you have to pay more attention to this?

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, charts & graphs, story-boarding, storyline structure, tables

Beer and Infographics DO mix

August 14, 2014 Colin McCrory 2 Comments

I’ve been tinkering with Adobe InDesign and Illustrator. These programs are very powerful but can be equally as frustrating to manipulate – much more manageable after a couple beers.

I put together this standalone document to illustrate the rise of the craft and microbrewery industry. The content is engaging but I’m most interested in your thoughts on the formatting and design. Don’t worry about holding any punches – this is an early shot at the tool and feedback is helpful.

Thanks and here is the PDF:
Beer and Infographics

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, 07c-Telling stories, 07d-Delivering a presentation, charts & graphs, creativity methods, PowerPoint resources, slide-craft, story-boarding, storyline structure, tables

Alternatives to PowerPoint

August 13, 2014 AshPait 2 Comments

PowerPoint Alternatives: Will PowerPoint Ever be Obsolete?

Will PowerPoint ever be replaced? It has become commonly accepted in the business world that ‘PowerPoint’ is synonymous with ‘Presentation’. However, when is the last time that you (or me, or anyone for that matter) questioned the validity of that accepted standard, or even gave fleeting consideration to using a different presentation platform or software program?

So, that leads to the question of whether or not PowerPoint will ever become obsolete, outdated, or replaced by something newer and shinier. In researching thoughts on this topic by folks smarter than myself (such as Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, in this article), I discovered a few things.

First of all, there are already many of alternatives to PowerPoint, and while they might not be household names, they can arguably match the functionality of PowerPoint, and perhaps even be more targeted towards your audience depending on the nature of the presentation. Some of the more popular alternatives to PowerPoint include Apple’s Keynote (which Steve Jobs popularized by using when rolling out new products), Google docs (free, ‘quick and dirty”), SlideRocket (great for folks in a sales environment), and perhaps most notably, Prezi (Intuitive, sophisticated, puts ‘slides in motion’, great for storytelling).

I am personally considering giving Prezi a try based on the positive reviews and feedback that I have read and would love to hear from anyone in our class who has tried the software first-hand. It does seem that one day PowerPoint might be replaced as the gold standard for delivering presentations, but that day is likely not going to come anytime soon, and we are likely better off improving our delivery method rather than changing the platform all-together.

So, what are your thoughts??

Articles for Reference:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/09/07/jeff-bezos-and-the-end-of-powerpoint-as-we-know-it/

http://lifehacker.com/5888189/five-best-powerpoint-alternatives

http://www.customshow.com/best-powerpoint-alternatives-presentation-programs/

http://www.powtoon.com/blog/10-best-powerpoint-alternatives/

05-Creating & constructing good solutions, 07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, 99-Spreadsheet modeling, charts & graphs, tables, Uncategorized

Misleading Graphs & Statistical Lies

August 12, 2014 Matthew Cranford 4 Comments

Graphs and Charts are everywhere, and are excellent tools to visually convey statistics, results, trends, data, etc. There are basically three groups of graphs out there that you’ll find on a regular basis:

1.) Graphs created by people who do know what they are doing

2.) Graphs created by people who don’t know what they are doing

3.) Graphs created by people who do know what they are doing and have manipulated it to intentionally deceive the viewer.

There’s a fine line between number 2 and 3 sometimes, and to be effective business leaders, one skill we must possess is the ability to call “BS”, whether intentional or unintentional. Below is a great book to help uncover a lot of deceptive tricks and a few some examples.

A great book that I highly recommend is: “How To Lie With Statistics“. It’s short, cheap, and uncovers numerous tricks people use with charts, graphs, numbers, and statistics to deceive the reader without breaking the rules.

Not to pick on Fox News, but below is a graph that is severely misleading in both the title and the scale of the X-axis. The title leads you to believe the data is by consecutive quarter, and the inaccurate spacing on the X-axis leads to to believe the data is linear.

If you title and plot this data accurately, below is what you would get:

There are many types of errors or tricks that results in the display of data in an inaccurate way. Below are several categories and things to watch out for the next time somebody slaps a fancy looking report down on your desk:

USE OF THE 3D CHART:

Simple use of 3D charts distort the ratio of pies and the height of bars. Notice how Item A and C look more similar in the 3D chart, but flattened, C is less than half of A

Chart

IMPROPER SCALING:

Notice how the intent is to increase the value 3X (Y-Axis), while the perception is that it increased 9X

The appropriate way to display the increase from 1 to 3 is shown below.

MISLEADING TRUNCATION:

The truncation on the following graph leads the viewer to believe that group E is nearly twice the size of group A. While sometimes truncation is a great tool in certain situations, it is often misused.

Looking at the scale from 0 to 12,000 puts in perspective how slight of a difference there is between groups.

IMPROPER AXIS RANGES:

The graph immediately below makes you feel as though the growth over time has been slow and gradual, but a quick change of the axis values gives a completely different perception. Don’t always believe the slopes of lines as they are a function of the Axis values.

OMISSION OF SCALE:

When Scales are left off, the range of the axis is unknown and differences are easily exaggerated or minimized.

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, charts & graphs, creativity methods, deliverables, PowerPoint resources, storyline structure, tables

Data Visualization – Tableau

July 21, 2014 AshPait 6 Comments

For starters, check out this video

I sometimes struggle with conveying my analysis (say, in Excel) into a presentation (say, in PowerPoint). The best way to capture the attention of your audience and to deliver an effective presentation is through data visualization. No matter how sound and detailed your analysis, if it is not communicated well to your audience then all of your hard work in performing that analysis was wasted.

Presenting data in a visual format can often be the quickest and most effective ways to convey results of your analysis and capture the attention of your audience. This can communicate a message that may have taken hours to develop in a matter of seconds if done correctly.

One of my favorite new data visualization resources that I am learning to use is called Tableau. Tableau is a software company that was founded in 2003 and does nothing other than data visualization. The company had sales of $34.2 Million in 2010 which grew to an astonishing $232.44 Million in 2013 and the company went public. It is now traded on the NYSE (ticker: DATA). It is extremely intuitive and the product looks amazing. Here is a great video that gives you an overview of the capabilities of Tableau (also linked above).

There are some really revolutionary and interesting methods to communicate data visually that are becoming more and more accepted in business and is thought by many as a way for companies to distinguish themselves among their peers. Often times my company might be similarly positioned to perform work for a given client, and I have seen that a lot of the work we have “won” has come from an effective pitch that highlights the strengths of our organization in a visually compelling manner that engages the client and shows that we can “give meaning to numbers” which is a skill that is hard to quantify.

I would be curious to get any thoughts on your experience with data visualization software and any recommendations you might have.

Other helpful data visualization links:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-data-visualization-revolution/

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/04/the-quick-and-dirty-on-data-visualization/

http://fortune.com/2011/11/15/how-tableau-software-makes-business-data-beautiful/

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

July 14, 2014 Mikhail Avady Leave a comment

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

July 10, 2014 cwmathe 1 Comment

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.

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

July 8, 2014 AshPait 4 Comments

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.

June 28, 2014 Andrew Cramer 2 Comments

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.

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