{"id":125,"date":"2011-06-21T12:01:37","date_gmt":"2011-06-21T19:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sqldbpros.com\/?p=125"},"modified":"2011-06-22T10:09:13","modified_gmt":"2011-06-22T17:09:13","slug":"radar-chart-you-must-be-kidding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/radar-chart-you-must-be-kidding\/","title":{"rendered":"Radar Chart?  You must be kidding."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I've been thinking about the display of data quite a bit lately.\u00a0\u00a0Some ways of presenting data are clearly more effective than others.\u00a0 When\u00a0providing data in a visual format the goals are one of the following:<!--more--><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Allow fast consumption of large amounts of information.<\/li>\n<li>Make patterns and trends obvious.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>This brings me to the annoying Excel radar chart.\u00a0 File this one under \"Just because you can doesn't mean you should.\" I've yet to come across a situation where this monstrosity was the best choice.\u00a0 I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt and did a little Googling to see what I came up with.\u00a0 This led me to \"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.internet4classrooms.com\/excel_radar.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Using a radar chart in Excel to see the big picture<\/a>\" which contained the following gem which I think illustrates my point perfectly:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<pre style=\"text-align: center;\">The pattern in this data set is\r\nmore clearly revealed using a Radar chart<\/pre>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.internet4classrooms.com\/excel_files\/radar_chart3.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"518\" height=\"420\" \/><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I hate to be a hater but as a French coworker used to say: \"Are you joking me!?!\"\u00a0 If this is the \"more clearly revealed\" version of the data I don't want to see the previous attempts.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, the sample data was included so I went ahead an took a shot at recreating the chart using a plain old boring line chart:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Book1_8233_image0011.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-130\" title=\"Book1_8233_image001\" src=\"http:\/\/www.sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Book1_8233_image0011.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"568\" height=\"354\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Book1_8233_image0011.png 568w, http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Book1_8233_image0011-300x186.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 568px) 100vw, 568px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/Book1_8233_image001.png\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Hmm, I'm not sure what the \"big picture\" was that the original radar chart was showing us but using the line chart it is very quickly obvious that:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>The trend for Sydney is opposite the trend for Bermuda and Memphis.<\/li>\n<li>The trend for Bermuda and Memphis are similar.<\/li>\n<li>The curve for Memphis is substantially steeper than Bermuda and Sydney.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>In the end it's apparent a line chart is a substantially better choice for this data and allows the viewer to analyze the data substantially faster than the radar graph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I've been thinking about the display of data quite a bit lately.\u00a0\u00a0Some ways of presenting data are clearly more effective than others.\u00a0 When\u00a0providing data in a visual format the goals are one of the following:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,17],"tags":[20,25,170],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-businss-intelligence","category-data-architect","tag-business-intelligence","tag-chart","tag-excel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sqldbpros.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}