Visual Display of Data in the Age of Twitter, Mobility, Web, Excel, and PowerPoint: Concise, Communication-Efficient, and Communication-Effective Graphs
LeRoy Bessler · 2010
I have long advocated and delivered simplicity in graphic design. The current popularity of concise wireless text messages, the widespread use of mobile phones and other devices with compact displays, and now the iPad, all reinforce the case for simplicity of information delivery. This nearly-two-hour tutorial about design and construction covers not only graphs suitable for small screen mobile devices, but also for management reports, web pages, slide presentations, hardcopy, articles in journals, magazines, or newspapers, or for use as companions to spreadsheet tables. It also provides two excellent ways to produce dynamic graphs without requiring the viewing user to have any extra plug-ins installed. By dynamic graphs I mean: (a) web-enabled graphs with pop-up labels (and a forward-and-backward link to/from a spreadsheet of the input data); and (b) animated graphs that can be deployed on a web page or in a PowerPoint slide. (Also covered is how to insert graphs and tables directly to PowerPoint slides.) For the case of a bar chart, a pie chart, and a line chart, the presentation includes the stepwise process of going from the minimal code for a default graph to the code needed to create a recommended communication-efficient and communicationeffective alternative. For other example graphs only the needed final code is provided in the slides, or references are provided if the code is too voluminous.