This stacked column chart from the USDA shows how effective tax rates will decline across seven farm commodity specializations resulting from last year’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). I needed to take a second look at this graph before…
Continue reading
For a while now, I’ve been interested in trying to figure out how different research fields think about and use data visualization in their work. As an economist, I visualize data all the time–some of it makes it into the…
Continue reading
Last week, I published a copy of my Data Visualization Cheatsheet, an introductory summary sheet I provide to people who take my classes and workshops. Today, I’m similarly publishing my Presentation Cheatsheet, a summary sheet I pass around at my…
Continue reading
In June, Stefanie Posavec and I teamed up to offer two data visualization workshops, one in DC and another in Chicago. We had so much fun, and the feedback so positive, that we’ve decided to hold another round of workshops! If…
Continue reading
I’m a big believer that anyone can learn how to communicate their data in better ways. I’ve published more than 130 podcast episodes, and I don’t think any of my guests have come directly to data visualization, but instead have…
Continue reading
If you’re currently using Excel 2016, you know that the Waterfall chart is now a default chart type. You can select your data and insert the chart as any other line, bar, or area chart. One problem I’ve found, however,…
Continue reading
This was the question posed to a group of 15 academic researchers across several social science fields at a recent conference I attended. As a researcher whose role is to help others improve how they communicate their work, I thought…
Continue reading
Communicating uncertainty is a difficult task. Many readers don’t fully appreciate or understand uncertainty, what it means, and where it comes from. A similar case can be made for visualizing distributions. I’ve heard many complaints about the good ol’ box-and-whisker…
Continue reading
When you look at this column chart from the USDA, what is the first thing you see? Go ahead, take a second… My guess is—admittedly, based on a sample size of three people I’ve already asked—that your first observation is…
Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I published an Excel tutorial on how to create the ill-named “box-and-whisker-and-scatterplot chart.” In response, Len Kiefer pointed me to a post on Maarten Lambrecht’s cool new project Xenographics that was essentially the same chart type, just…
Continue reading
