Data Viz Humor

For my last post of the year, I give you 60 seconds of data viz humor. ICYMI, How I Met Your Mother did a great bit on charts and graphs back in 2009. If you like this, you might want to checkout Chart Chat’s recent discussion of the Top Ten Charts on TV.

To see past data tips, including those about other chart types, scroll down or click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Present Diversity Data (or What To Steal From This Diversity Scorecard)

Reposted from February 2022

Today’s tip is to take inspiration from Chantilly Jaggernauth’s excellent diversity scoreboard displayed below. It shows diversity among employees in a company but can easily be applied to staff or participants in a nonprofit organization.

I suggest you steal the following ideas from Chantilly:

  • Metric Definitions. In a Tableau Conference session, Chantilly shares the pros and cons of the four metrics in the dashboard. See image of the slide below. None of the metrics are perfect. But together they provide an understanding of where an organization is in its diversity efforts. These definitions are not incorporated in the dashboard itself but could be added through a link or in a tooltip (scroll over) feature.*

  • Views of Diversity. The dashboard provides three views of diversity: overall, gender, and people of color (POC). By providing side-by-side charts with these three views, the dashboard allows users to see variations that overall diversity charts obscure.

  • Color Coding. Each type of diversity has its own color, which makes the comparison among overall, gender, and POC easy, even when you scroll down and can no longer see the column headers. Also the comparison groups (non-diversity, male, and non-POC) are represented by the same colors in lighter shades. This approach makes the dashboard easier to understand. Assigning three additional colors for the comparison groups could be confusing and require a color legend.

  • Simple Charts. These are all charts we all know how to read. So the scorecard is accessible immediately to anyone, even if they are not familiar with the data or the organization.

  • Also, note that the dashboard and the slide use different terms for two of the metrics.

Source: HR Diversity Scorecard on Tableau Public by Lovelytics

Image above from Tableau Conference session called “Next Gen Analytics for Your New Normal” on 11/10/21.


Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Context is King

Reposted from July 2023

This “sketchplanation” elegantly demonstrates the importance of context in understanding anything. Since data visualizations are supposed to help people understand something, we should pay close attention to context when creating them, adding as much context as is needed for others to appreciate what’s going on and act on it. Considering the following charts . . .

Low-context chart

This is your garden variety chart. I see them all the time. Sure, it provides some context by comparing clients served in different zip code areas. But it doesn’t give me enough context to understand if these numbers are high, low, or somewhere in between. This chart needs more context.

Moderate-context chart

This chart is better than the one above. By providing the previous year’s numbers, we can see where there has been increases and decreases and how large and small they were as well as compare the number increases (3) to the number of decreases (1).

Moderate-context chart

This chart, too, allows for better assessment of the numbers than the first chart did. By simply adding a reference line for the goal, we have a better understanding of what’s going on and where we might need to take action. A reference line showing the average number of clients per zip code might also be helpful.

High-context chart

This “small multiples chart”* gives us much more context by showing how the current numbers compare to past years. Consider, for example, the trend for 60601. Just knowing the current and past years’ numbers would not give you an appreciation of the overall upward trend.

*Small multiples chart: a series of similar graphs or charts using the same scale and axes, allowing them to be easily compared

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

The Pies That Bind

Reposted from November 2022

Rather than provide you with a tip, I thought I’d start this holiday week by offering you a little hope instead. It’s pie season, and folks are searching for pie recipes on Pinterest. According to this Food & Wine article, Pinterest analyzed internal search data to discover the most common pie recipe search terms in each state. I took that data and mapped it. As you can see below, pie preferences do not appear to fall along regional, ideological, or even agricultural lines. Minnesotans love lemon pie, and Floridians love pumpkin pie, although I’m guessing that more lemons are grown in Florida and pumpkins in Minnesota. Some states were idiosyncratic in their searches. Hello West Virginians who love no-bake peanut butter pies and Kentuckians who love pies made with cushaws, a type of squash I’d never heard of. But most states shared pie interests with other states. So this Thanksgiving, let’s be thankful for our shared love of pie. Scroll around on the vizes below and Happy Thanksgiving!

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

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Hi, I'm Amelia.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 14)

“All creative work builds on what came before.” —Austin Kleon in Steal Like An Artist.

Today I offer up another steal-worthy viz that I came across in the Tableau Public Gallery. All nonprofits need to understand and show the demographics of their participants or the communities they serve. This dashboard of South Korea’s demographics uses some good strategies you can apply to your organization’s charts and maps. Keep scrolling to examine the dashboard and see my suggestions on what to steal from it.

Here’s what I suggest you steal from this viz:

  • Heat = Density. The map uses warmer colors to show higher population density and cooler colors to show lower density. This makes finding the big population centers easy.

  • Charts for key demographics. A quick review of the charts on the right gives you a clear understanding of demographic trends over time.

  • Chart title as color legend. Using the chart title to explain the color coding in the chart is a great way to save space on small charts.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

I Used Free ChatGPT To Analyze Survey Data. Here's What I Learned.

1. You collect this type of survey data.

Here’s a familiar scenario. You survey your clients, participants, donors, volunteers, etc. and you include some “Other, please specify” options or other “open-ended” questions to better understand respondents’ opinions, experiences, etc.

2. But you don’t know what to do with it.

You collect your survey data but don’t have the time and/or analytical skills to deal with this qualitative data.* Maybe you create one of those horrible word clouds or, even more likely, you just analyze the quantitative data and ignore the qualitative data.

If you had the time and know-how, you might have “coded” the data in order to analyze it. This involves assigning themes to each open-ended survey response in Excel (or the like) or perhaps using one of these free tools.

*Quantitative data is numerical, countable, or measurable. Qualitative data is interpretation-based, descriptive, and relating to language.

3. But what about AI?

You’ve heard that it’s supposed to make tedious, repetitive tasks much easier, and coding survey responses certainly qualifies as both. Could you use the free version of ChatGPT to get this job done? I shared your curiosity and gave it a try. Bottom line: It helped to identify themes to use as codes but it didn’t do all the work for me. For a little longer description of my experience, keep reading.

4. Prepare for AI.

I watched this YouTube Video based on this article to learn how to craft a prompt that would likely get me what I wanted. I also found free survey data on the City of Chicago Data Portal to use for my experiment. The survey asked 43rd Ward residents about “other priorities” for their ward. I thought I could just upload the CSV data file to Chat, but it turns out you need the paid version for that. So I ended up pasting in the survey answers after entering the prompt. Also note that I used publicly available data. You should think twice about entering any type of sensitive data into Chat.

5. Craft the prompt.

Here it is. Yes, it’s long and yes, I say “please,” although I’m not sure if that affected the results!

6. Here’s what happened.

I first tried pasting in the prompt plus the data but that was too long for Chat. So I had to feed the data (all 23 pages) in batches of about 3 pages at a time and despite entreaties to Chat to update the charts based on ALL of the data I shared so far, it only gave me charts for the last batch I had entered, and I had to combine them in Excel. At first I was impressed with the almost instant tables, but I felt my AI assistant wasn’t quite listening to my instructions or just not understanding them. Still, I did develop this list of themes and Chat did code each survey response according to these themes, but I would not feel comfortable relying on these results and would want to possibly combine some of these themes and read through all the responses to see if I agree with the coding.

To see past data tips, including those about other chart types, scroll down or click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Data Viz Resources You Should Know: Visual Capitalist

Here’s a new addition to my highly-curated resources list: Visual Capitalist. I occasionally write a 60-second data tip describing a particular resource, including why I think it’s cool. And I link each of these tips to a resources list on my website.

What is it?

Visual Capitalist is an on-line publisher of data visualizations. Their aim is to make the world’s data more discoverable. As the name suggests, the visualizations primarily focus on markets, technology, energy, and the global economy but also on education, healthcare, and the environment using public sources of data including government entities (i.e. U.S. Census data, FRED, etc.), intergovernmental organizations (IMF, World Bank, etc.), or established thought leaders in their respective sectors (think tanks, non-profits, corporations).

Who’s it for?

Anyone who wants to understand or show information on markets, technology. energy, healthcare, education or the global economy. They allow much of their original visual content to be used by others. In many use cases, this can be done for free. (See more info on using their content.)

Who’s behind it?

Visual Capitalist is independently owned, with its founder, Jeff Desjardins, as a majority shareholder.

Why I think it’s cool

Their visualizations can be quite engaging with high production values. You can share them on social media for free. Sign up for a free subscription on any page of their website to get one in your email box each day.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Data Viz Inspo

Looking for ways to make your data more engaging? Take inspiration from these data tips on steal-worthy visualizations. Click on the images below to see the whole visualization and get suggestions on what to steal from it.

To see past data tips, including those about other chart types, scroll down or click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Behold the Heated Bar Chart

I’ve come across this useful chart a number of times and have yet to find a name for it. So I’m giving it one: the heated bar chart. If a bar chart and a heat map had a baby, it might look like this and be even more powerful than its useful parents. This heated bar chart shows months along the horizontal axis and days of the week along the vertical axis. Darker and longer bars on the two bar charts and darker cells on the heat map show when there has been the highest participation in hours. This allows us to examine patterns in participation. We can see, for example, that the relatively high participation in May is being driven by participation on Mondays during that month but that Monday was not a particularly high participation day during other months. We can also see that, overall, participation was lower during the fall months, regardless of day of the week.

This powerful combo chart can be used with many different types of data fields. For example, you might want to create one showing the number of participants from different gender identity and age groups to see if certain gender groups within certain age brackets are not well represented among your participants.

I made this chart with Tableau Public, the free version of Tableau. But this type of chart can be created with any number of applications. For those of you with at least a little Tableau know-how, check out the steps I took in the comic strip below.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Data Viz Dangers: Hiding Variability

Data visualization has its pitfalls and landmines. Sometimes charts, graphs, and maps can have harmful consequences, intended or not.  So I’m offering up another tip in a series of 60-Second Data Tips that point out pitfalls and landmines to avoid. This time, it’s about hiding variability.

If we see a bar chart like the one below showing median income of Medicare beneficiaries by demographic group, we may make the following mistakes in interpreting it:

  • Assume that all or most of those in the higher income groups are earning more than all or most of those in lower income groups rather than assume that there may be more variation in income within groups than between groups.

  • Assume that the higher median income of a given group suggests that those in that group are more capable, smarter, skilled, etc. than those in lower median income groups rather than assume that those in the lower group faced challenges (e.g. racism, lack of education, etc.) that resulted in the lower median income. (This is called the fundamental attribution error.*)

  • Generalize our error-ridden conclusions about the people represented in the chart to all of those in certain racial, age, gender, or other demographic groups.

Eli Holder and Cindy Xiong conducted studies in which they showed participants charts that emphasized within group variability as well as those that did not like the chart shown above. And they found that participants were less likely to make the mistakes listed above when shown charts that emphasize within group variability such as the one below which shows that there is a lot of variability in scores within schools that one can’t appreciate by only looking at averages (represented by the black horizontal bars.)

Source: Jitter Plots in Tableau, by Ashish Singh

For a great ten-minute summary of the research, check out this video. What to do to avoid this pitfall? The video suggests that we find ways to represent variability within groups as shown below:

To see past data tips, click HERE.

*When visualizing data, we should consider how humans think including heuristics (i.e. mental shortcuts) and biases. Some of them have particular relevance to data visualization such as the fundamental attribution error, which is our tendency to relate behavior to a person’s character and personality rather than to the person’s context. So when someone cuts you off in traffic, if you write them off as a jerk rather than someone who is late for work or distracted, that’s the fundamental attribution error.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Pop Quiz: Guess What This Chart Shows

Reposted from September 2022

Go ahead and make a guess from the options below. Then scroll down to see how your response compares with others’ and what the answer is!

Keep scrolling!

The answer: The decline in child poverty in the U.S.


As reported in The New York Times, “the sharp retreat of child poverty represents major progress and has drawn surprisingly little notice, even among policy experts.” Read the article (and view the detailed line chart) to learn more about the role of government aid in lifting children and families out of poverty.

I share this chart with you—in this way—for a couple of reasons:

1) It’s an engagement strategy you can use. Rather than present a list of stats to your audience, you can engage them in your data by first quizzing them on an interesting, fun, or counterintuitive finding from your data.

2) Bad new bias. Bad news is more likely to be reported than good news, possibly because bad news sells, according to this article citing various research. Perhaps because of that bias, we may be more likely to assume a chart is telling a negative story. This chart is a reminder of the importance of taking a broader view to gain a more balanced understanding of an issue.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Ideas You Should Steal From This Viz (Installment 13)

“All creative work builds on what came before.” —Austin Kleon in Steal Like An Artist.

Today I offer up another steal-worthy interactive viz that I came across in the Tableau Public Gallery. Scroll down to see what you should steal from it.

Source: Nir Smilga on Tableau Public

Here’s what I suggest you steal from this viz:

  • Small Multiples. To highlight each country and to allow for easy comparisons across countries, Smilga created one small chart per country and placed them alongside each other, aka a “small multiples chart.”

  • Gray comparison trends. While Smilga highlights the trend for the featured country in each chart using color, the trends for other countries are also in each chart but in a light gray. This allows us to easily compare the trend for the featured country to that of others in general.

  • Color distinguishes trend types. Recent downward trends are highlighted in red, and recent upward trends are highlighted in blue.

  • Choose your view. Smilga allows the viewer to customize the view by selecting the number of columns, time period, and countries shown.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Why You Should Know About Calendar Heat Maps

Want to see patterns in participation, fundraising, volunteering, or social media measures across an entire year? A calendar heat map might do the trick.

This is a new addition to a series of tips on different chart types. In each tip, l give you need-to-know information in a format akin to the “Drug Facts” on the back of medication boxes: active ingredients (what the chart is), uses (when to use it), and warnings (what to look out for when creating the chart). The idea is to fill up your toolbox with a variety of tools for making sense of data. And the calendar heat map is a simple tool you can put to good use!

Active Ingredients (What is a calendar heat map?)

As in the example above, a calendar heat map shows a measure across days on a calendar. The measure might be the number of participants, dollars raised, volunteers recruited, social media engagement, etc.

Uses

Calendar heat maps provide a great way to see patterns in a measure over time, particularly if month and day of the week are important factors. For example, such a chart can help you detect whether participation is lagging on Mondays during summer months. In the example above, you can scroll over dates for more information and use the program filter to see participation for the selected program. Here are instructions for creating an interactive calendar heat map with Tableau and in Excel.

Warnings

Depending on your needs, other charts that show change over time may be more useful to you. For example, if you need to more clearly see the amount of change over time, a line graph might serve you better. For other chart types that show change over time, see below.

Fun Fact

Here’s a fun calendar heat map showing more/less common birth dates.

Source: Amitabh Chandra on Tableau Public

To see past data tips, including those about other chart types, scroll down or click HERE.

Source: Visual Vocabulary by Andy Kriebel on Tableau Public

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Make Data Viz Accessible

Data visualization is the translation of data in the form of words and numbers to a visual format, using color, size, shape, and placement to convey trends and patterns in the data which can be much less apparent when looking at tables of numbers or words. Thus data viz communicates best to those with full visual capabilities. To make charts, graphs, and maps accessible to those with visual impairment, we must translate the meaning of a visualization back into words, which can be a challenge. Amy Cesal's article, Writing Alt Text for Data Visualization, can help us address that challenge.

Alt text is a brief description meant to provide the meaning and context of a visual item in a digital setting. And although Cesal notes that, in most cases, it’s impossible to write something short that conveys the whole meaning of a visualization, she maintains that an incomplete description is better than none at all. Here are Cesal’s simple guidelines for alt text for data viz:

Chart type: It’s helpful for people with partial sight to know the chart type. This information provides context for understanding the rest of the visual. Example: Line graph.

Type of data: What data is included in the chart? The x and y axis labels may help you figure this out. Example: number of clients served per day in the last year.

Reason for including the chart: Think about why you’re including this visual. What does it show that’s meaningful? There should be a point to every visual and you should tell people what to look for. Example: more clients are served during the winter months.

Cesal also suggests that you include a link to the raw data somewhere in the surrounding text.

For a deeper dive into this topic, checkout Image Description Guidelines from the Diagram Center.

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

A Common Problem with Survey Data - And How to Avoid It

Sampling bias occurs when some members of the group you are trying to understand are less likely to be included in your data than others. Survey data is especially vulnerable to sampling bias. The data you collect is often not representative of the whole group that received the survey but rather the subgroup that was willing to complete the survey — as illlustrated in the “sketchplanation” above. So here are some quick tips to avoid this type of bias in your survey data:

  • Clearly define the group and related subgroups that you want to understand. Consider what might be necessary to collect sufficient data from all of the subgroups.

  • Follow up with those who don’t respond to the survey to understand why they didn’t respond. Did you ask the wrong questions or target the wrong audience? Apply these insights next time you are planning a survey.

  • Make your survey brief and easy to understand.

  • Finally, don’t overinterpret your survey date. Assess which types of respondents were the least likely to respond and interpret accordingly.

For a fuller explanation of types of sampling bias and strategies to avoid it, check out this SurveyMonkey article.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Create Data Stories That Actually Engage People

Here’s a sneak preview of a workshop I’m doing on September 26th. I’m sharing the first few slides below. Click on the right to advance through them.

Presentation Preview by Amelia Kohm

To tell a story in a way that humans can understand and get behind, it helps to understand humans’ powers and challenges when it comes to consuming data. Then we can make better charts, maps, and graphs (aka data visualizations) and present them in a way that humans can absorb.

I hope you can join me on September 26th, 8:00 am - 9:00 am PT | 11:00 am - 12:00 pm ET. Click HERE to register.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Add This To Make Your Charts Memorable

Copy of 60-SECOND DATA TIP_3.png

Reposted from October 2019

Look at the two images below.  Which catches your attention? Which do you think you are more likely to remember?

Edward Tufte and other data viz gurus have warned us against “chartjunk” which is anything that is not necessary to comprehend the information represented on a chart, map, or graph. The idea is to get rid of distractions and focus attention on the data.

But some research by Michelle Borkin and colleagues points in a different direction.  In an experiment, they showed participants charts with and without various elements that might be construed as chartjunk like photos and drawings. They found that such images not only did not hinder memory or understanding of visualizations, they appeared to serve as “visual hooks into memory.”  Such visual hooks are important because what we perceive is based, in part, on what we expect to perceive due past experiences.

The idea of not loading up a chart with a lot of junk competing for attention is still a good one. But some images, if they are closely related to the data and connect with what folks already know, can help viewers to focus on and absorb information.

For more on how to capture attention with data visualizations, check out this data tip.

Sources:

M. A. Borkin et al., "Beyond Memorability: Visualization Recognition and Recall," in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 519-528, 31 Jan. 2016.

 P. Kok et al., “Associative Prediction of Visual Shape in the Hippocampus,” in Journal of Neuroscience 1 August 2018, 38 (31) 6888-6899.

 Photo by Nery Zarate on Unsplash

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

How To Activate Board Member Fundraising With Visuals

Reposted from January 2023

I recently came across this excellent article by The Fundraising Authority. As promised in the title, it provides a “Simple, Step-by-Step Process for Getting Your Board to Refer New Prospects to Your Non-Profit.” In a nutshell, here are the four steps:

  1. Explain how referrals work and assure your board members that no one they refer will be asked for money until they indicate a desire to get involved.

  2. Show board members how many people they actually know through a mind mapping exercise.

  3. Ask board members for referrals usually in person.

  4. Bring referral success stories back to board meetings on a regular basis.

My tip is to enhance steps 2 and 4 with visuals.

Visuals for Step 2: For the mind map, the point is for board members to brainstorm all the people they know by considering people in different categories of their lives. You can use Canva whiteboards (or a similar tool) to create a mind map that the board member (pictured in the middle) can use to add the names of people in each category on virtual post-it notes.

Visuals for Step 4: The article claims that “this is a key step. Nothing will convince your board members to bring you more referrals than hearing from other board members that have done it successfully.” You can visualize the donors whom various board members brought in using tools like Flourish to show their networks, as in this example. Scroll over the circles to interact with it and learn more. Some board members brought in donors who, in turn, brought in other donors. To make something similar, select one of the network graph templates on Flourish and fill in the data needed. (See snapshots of the data I added for the visual below.)

Links data

(used to show who is connected to whom)

Points data

(used to show groups by color, size points according to amount of donations, and add images for board members)

To see past data tips, click HERE.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

When to (and NOT to) Use a Map

Copy of 60-SECOND DATA TIP_3.png

Reposted from December 2019

Maps can be a powerful way to show your data. But not always. Maps work best when . . .

1) Your audience already knows the geography.

Most Americans have a basic understanding of the size, demographics, land use, weather, and history of different regions of the U.S. It’s that foundational knowledge that makes maps like the following so effective. We think: wow, cows would take up all of the midwest if we put them all together, and urban housing would require only a portion of New England. Or, if only white men voted, just a few states in New England and the Northwest would go Democratic.

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Brilliant Maps

But when we are not familiar with the geography, maps are much less illuminating. For example, if you don’t know Ireland well, then this map does not shed much more light on the matter than the simple bar chart in the upper left hand corner. It tells us which clans are most prevalent, which is all the map also shows us unless we know more about the different regions.

Source: Brilliant Maps

Source: Brilliant Maps

2. You are showing the significance of proximity or distance.

Even if your audience is not familiar with the geography (and sometimes especially when they are not familiar with it), maps can be an effective way to show proximity or distance. This map of the Eastern Congo shows us how close armed groups (in green) are to internally displaced people (in purple). Just naming the cities or regions where these two groups are would not be effective for audience unfamiliar with the geography.

Source: Brilliant Maps

Source: Brilliant Maps

For more information on when to use a choropleth map (in which regions are filled with a color, shades or patterns to represent a value), check out this great article from Datawrapper.

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.

Charts That Changed The World

This week’s tip is to check out this video from The Royal Society in which Adam Rutherford shares five data visualizations that have changed the world. Admittedly, this will take you more than 60 seconds to watch (it’s 6 minutes). But it’s worth it. Rutherford shares four classic charts. Two of them clarified a problem so well that they led to solutions. He also shares a chart that drives home the dangers of visualizing lies and thus making them look legitimate. If you’d like to learn more about these charts, I’ve included links below the video. Enjoy!

Let’s talk about YOUR data!

Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.