http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog A blog by Stephen Few Thu, 09 Sep 2010 16:26:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I delivered a keynote presentation at Tableau's Customer Conference last week. Several people at the conference expressed appreciation for the insights contained in one of my slides in particular, so I thought I'd share it here in my blog. Here's what I said while showing this slide: The industry that has claimed ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=820 The BI industry has always failed to understand and support its real customers. With few exceptions, BI product vendors and consultancies continue to be acquainted primarily with IT. This is a comfortable, compatible relationship, for BI and IT both tend to see the world from an engineering-oriented, techno-centric perspective. But ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=814 This blog entry was written by Bryan Pierce of Perceptual Edge. Last week Stephen published an article entitled, "Our Irresistible Fascination with All Things Circular," which describes how people's seemingly innate love for circles has led to the creation of many dysfunctional graphs, such as pie charts. Today, another example of ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=799 A colleague sent me a link to Rachel Maddow's website today where she features a graph that was used by BP senior vice president Kent Wells to show how the company's efforts to collect the oil that's spewing into the ocean at a rate of several thousands of barrels per ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=790 Oracle Corporation takes its name from the treasured advice-givers of ancient Greece. Its name is ironic at times, however, when its advice is far from sage. When it comes to data visualization, and dashboard design in particular, Oracle gives some downright awful advice. I received an email from one of my ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=784 I was invited to speak at a recent TEDx event in Berkeley, but I withdrew late in the game when the TED folks asked me to sign a contract that would have given them the right to edit my talk however they wished without my permission. This is something that ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=774 It is not difficult to present data in clear, accurate, and meaningful ways. The skills that are required to do this can be easily learned. They involve simple principles, most of which have been taught for many years. So why are most data displays so impoverished? One reason is that we ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=756 In the January 2010 issue of the Visual Business Intelligence Newsletter I redesigned a display of health care costs that appears on GE's website. I did this using Tableau and provided a link in the article to a live version of the interactive display on the Web. You might have ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=753 The software vendors that have dominated the business intelligence market for the last 15 years or so have hit the wall and they haven't a clue how to scale it. They're stuck because they insist on applying the skills and methods that helped them successfully build data warehouses and production ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=727 A new book about information graphics was published last month titled The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics, by Dona M. Wong, the graphics director for this respected newspaper. I get excited whenever a new book about data visualization is published, especially one that teaches practical techniques, because too ... http://www.perceptualedge.com/blog/?p=707