Data Visualization Principles — Charts That Don't Lie
Chart selection, cognitive load, Tufte's principles, the data-ink ratio, and how to build visualizations that drive decisions.
A chart is a lie-delivery mechanism. Not intentionally (usually), but a poorly chosen or poorly designed chart will mislead the viewer as effectively as fabricated data. A y-axis that doesn't start at zero makes a 2% change look like a crisis. A pie chart with 15 slices communicates nothing. A dashboard packed with 30 widgets overwhelms instead of informs.
Data visualization is the interface between your BI infrastructure and the humans who make decisions. Get it right and a VP glances at a dashboard and knows exactly what's happening. Get it wrong and they either ignore the dashboard or, worse, make a bad decision based on a misleading chart.
Tufte's Principles — The Foundation
Edward Tufte literally wrote the book on data visualization. His principles, published in *The Visual Dis
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