Improving popular visualizations
Most popular visualizations are popular for good reason. Basic bar charts and line graphs are familiar, intuitive, and flexible and are thus widely used in data visualization. Other less basic visualizations such as bullet graphs and Pareto charts may not be something you use every day but are nonetheless useful additions to a data analyst’s toolbox. And while these are all good, they could do more. In this section, we will explore ideas for how to tweak, extend, and even overhaul a few popular chart types.
Bullet graphs
The bullet graph was invented by Stephen Few and communicated publicly in 2006 through his book Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data. Stephen Few continues to be a strong voice in the data visualization space through his books and his blog, www.perceptualedge.com. Bullet graphs communicate efficiently and intuitively by packing a lot of information into a small space while remaining...