Why visualization fails

Trends in the last few years show companies are drowning in data, but starving for insights. We have unparalleled amounts of data and struggle to turn it into decision-making information. You have access to three metrics from your business. And, further, would you know what business decisions to make based on those numbers? What actions will you take when the data shows a specific result?

And you need context to make the most of your data. In addition to forgetting or purposefully skipping the important step of defining your goals for data visualization, there are other common mistakes we see.

Avoid this pitfall and revisit your dashboard at planned intervals daily, weekly, monthly. The fun yet dangerous part about data is you can essentially make it say whatever you want it to say. Take this chart, which shows the per capita consumption of chicken and how it appears to correlate with US crude oil imports. Are these two items actually related? Probably not. But it sure looks like they are. It lowers the bar and takes the power of failure away.

It also allows you to have a conversation with your fear of failure. Mermer Blakeslee explores this beautifully in her book A Conversation with Fear. But engaging with your fear helps you to see it for what it really is, which is rarely as bad as you imagine.

What not to say. How to recover if it goes badly. How to handle yourself in the worst case without losing control. Best to get used to it. After getting slammed by that wave, my feeling of confidence lasted the rest of the trip. Even when we got to the hardest rapid in the canyon — Lava Falls — I went through it with ease.

So much so that I pulled my boat up the bank and ran it again. This second time, a wave hit me sideways and I flipped, losing my paddle. I stayed in my boat and reached up with my hands to the surface of the water and flipped myself back over. A hands roll. In the biggest water the canyon had to offer. You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Subscribe for unlimited access. Create an account to read 2 more. Managing yourself.

We got […] by Peter Bregman. Read more on Managing yourself. Peter Bregman is the CEO of Bregman Partners , a company that helps successful people become better leaders, create more effective teams, and inspire their organizations to produce great results. From bar graphs, to pie charts, to linear representations, each type of visual graphic has its own specific strengths and purpose.

For example, bar graphs are best suited to display different categories or rankings. Meanwhile, pie charts are effective in representing percentages for data with less than 6 categories. When the numbers in your visual do not add up, readers doubt their eyes and question your analysis. So always be sure to check your arithmetic. For instance, the most common mistake in pie charts is having components that do not add up to percent.

Most visuals or graphs have an intrinsic logic we should use to our advantage. For example, a line chart that shows progression over time on the X-axis will make intuitive sense to viewers.