Bar Graph Etiquette

A pet peeve of mine is a representation of data in table format... especially on a Powerpoint slide. Numbers bear no meaning, and frankly, a majority of readers are visual, and would like to see simplified, dumbed-down, colour-coding galore visual aids.

Like a father would say to his estranged child: "You mean nothing to me." 

But after attending an industry conference this week, I quickly realized instead of making data easier to swallow, certain people shove the data down people's throat, enforce a spew due to the shoving, take that spew and further shove it down people's throat, inducing the runs in said people's digestive systems, and take the results from this process and slap it on some chart like finger paint. 

If you believe the above description was quite graphic, I would like to refer you to the examples below. Please beware that the following charts may be a little grizzly for those readers with a weak stomach.

Someone at some point between 1978-1999 managed to survey all women. A statistical God. And what woman could possibly live without life's #1 necessities, kids backslash money? I'm quite certain there should be an "I'm with stupid(s)" next to those arrows. I have no clue as to what other purpose they would be serving otherwise. 

Like a really bad American movie that tries to get more attention at the box office, it has gone 3-D! And I stand corrected: someone managed to survey all American women between 1978-1999. An American statistical God. 

NC and FA are increasing!!! Someone, make them stop. 

This is a prime example of a researcher that is too lazy to touch their millions of data points recorded by the second. So the logical thing to do is to of course plot everything on one graph, and make each data set a vibrant neon colour. Joy! 

Bar graphs and annotations: like whiskey in a pina colada. 

Mr. Blow is not a fan of pies. He much prefers cinnamon buns instead. 

In order to avoid the visual aids atrocities, like the ones above, I would like to suggest the following:

• Simplicity is sexy. Keep it simple. Don't stack bar on top of bar in your bar graphs. It only makes them harder to grasp, because your readers have to take the sections of that bar graph, extrapolate back to the axis, read the scale, do the math in their head... Just too much effort. 
• 3-D graphs are stupid. They are useless and they don't do any good. Just don't use them. 
• If there is too little data to plot, just don't plot it.
• If there is way too much data to plot, average it over time periods, indecize it, blur out the noise, do something to show you've actually analyzed the data, and not blindly copied everything into an Excel spreadsheet. 
• Get creative with your charts, but don't make them more confusing. Making your readers feel stupid reading your chart, does not make your chart a good chart.

I would like to finish this post with a great example of good visual aids, which you may find in the video clip (which is a great visual aid within itself) below:

Oh Marshall...