1. Visualizing Two Numbers
Title Slide
Created By: Jeffrey A. Shaffer Vice President, Unifund Adjunct Faculty, University of Cincinnati (513) | @HighVizAbility

2. Chart Types How many can you name?
How many chart types can you name?
[students typically get the standard chart types – partial list below]
Line chart, bar chart, histogram, dot plot, scatter plot, box plot (box and whiskers), pie chart, donut chart, area chart, unit chart, bubble chart, map, treemap, bullet chart, gantt chart, flow chart, swimlane diagram, venn diagram, sankey diagram, chord diagram, streamgraph, radar chart.

3. Source: http://tinyurl.com/DVperiodictable
Someone created a “Periodic Table of Data Visualization Methods”. Many in the data visualization community took issue with this, one because there is nothing periodic about these (like there is with the Periodic Table of Elements). Two, there are some charts on here that are questionable. For example, people generally don’t refer to a chart as the “Heaven and Hell” chart. The link at the bottom goes to an interactive version where you can click each box and see an example.
Source:

4. Class Exercise Visualize two numbers
How many chart types can you name?
[students typically get the standard chart types – partial list below]
Line chart, bar chart, histogram, dot plot, scatter plot, box plot (box and whiskers), pie chart, donut chart, area chart, unit chart, bubble chart, slopegraph, choropleth map, treemap, bullet chart, gantt chart, flow chart, swimlane diagram, venn diagram, sankey diagram, chord diagram, streamgraph, radar chart.

5. A quick refresher on the preattentive attributes.

6. 75 37 Visualize these two numbers
also list the preattentive attributes being used 75 37
[In-class exercise (20-30 minutes depending on class size) - This exercise requires stacks of small post-it notes and pens or markers to be passed out to the students.]
“Break out into small groups and come up with as many ways as you can to visualize these two numbers. For each chart type, write down the preattentive attributes that are being used in the chart.”
[After exercise is over, discuss all of the different charts. Teams can put the post-it’s up on the wall and other students can come up and see all of the solutions (or projected up on a screen). You will likely see common charts among the groups, ex. bar charts, slopegraphs, etc. Discuss each distinct chart type and what it shows. Some will work better than others for making comparisons. Some of the students might get creative, ex. comparing ages of people, temperature, or currency. This can be an interesting discussion.
Once discussion is done then continue examples in the slide deck.]

7. Tableau Conference 2015
11/29/ :28 AM 75 37
Here is an example where color has been added. Does this mean anything to you now? What could this represent?
© 2015 Tableau Software. All rights reserved.

8. 75 37 Tuesday How about now? Tableau Conference 2015
11/29/ :28 AM
Tuesday 75 37
How about now?
© 2015 Tableau Software. All rights reserved.

9. Tableau Conference 2015
11/29/ :28 AM
Tuesday
75o
37o
With just a few small additions, we now see these numbers in context. This is a very common format or visualizing weather.
© 2015 Tableau Software. All rights reserved.

10. Here is one example.

11. Here is another.

12. Let’s look at another way of looking at the data
Let’s look at another way of looking at the data. In this case it looks like some number went from 37 up to 75. Is that good or bad? We don’t really know.

13. How about now?

14. It’s a little more obvious, isn’t it?

15. Defects per 100K have more than doubled in the last year
Again, making a few minor adjustments and now we can see these numbers in context.

16. One last example. What do you think is going on here? Any ideas?

17. Score
What if we add the title score? Any guesses?

18. Golf Score
How about now?

19. Golf Score
Par
Par
Again, just little things that bring out the context of the data.

20. Golf Score after nine holes
Par
Par
We see that the current score of the first 9 holes on a golf course, where 37 is over par for the 9 holes, and the progress toward par on 18 holes.