Chapter 4
Using Charts Effectively
In This Chapter
Keeping charts simple
Using charts that are clear to users
Knowing when to use dials
Most people are introduced to charts pretty early in their school careers. Teachers use charts for attendance, seating, spelling, history lessons, and so on. This is probably why, unless you're a math major, you hope you never have to deal with charts again.
But it's time to take a second look. New tools have made it much easier to turn raw data into a good-looking chart. In addition, as a person facing the Big Data age, you probably can't escape it anyway. It's time to embrace data visualizations.
This chapter looks at different types of charts and their use. You need to know which charts are best for beginners and which ones to avoid.
Deciding Which Charts to Use and When to Use Them
The purpose of a chart is to package information in a way that makes it quickly understandable. The thing that makes charts so useful is that they provide a quickly recognizable shape for your data. Think about that for a moment. Each graph you create has its own ...
Get Data Visualization For Dummies now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
