How many people power the Forbes Cloud 100? Is there a correlation between company rank and employee size? Have they expanded or contracted.

Learn how to build 28 charts in 60 minutes that compare two years.

In this week’s tip, I show you how to create directional lollipops, an alternative view to time series jittering. In the video, I look at the incredible season by Stephen Curry and his shot results minute-by-minute, game-by-game.

Enjoy!

• Who I was with? 
• What stress level did it introduce?
• What was the major topic? 
• How long will it take to resolve?
• Was it resolved by the end of the week?

John Matyskiel of Ontario, Canada! 

The participants were asked to redesign this viz.  The instructions were intentionally vague and I also intentionally chose a data set that had a few problems.  There were several outstanding entries, for which I’ll highlight a few of my favorites below.

We must start with John’s winning entry, which he built with Adobe Illustrator. 

Download a PDF version here to view at full size.

What set John apart from the others was his use of story telling.  I felt like I really learned something after reading John’s work.  Even though I‘m not typically a big fan of stacked bar charts, John’s work for me because visually the bars are asking me to compare travel methods across an individual city, not down the chart.  John makes good use of colors too, keeping travel methods within the same categories in the same color palette.  If I had to pick one thing to improve, it would be to make the gridlines lighter.

For his efforts, John will receive a super warm Facebook hoodie.  I suppose he might need it up in Canada.

Robin Kennedy of The Information Lab in the UK submitted this interactive version built with Tableau.  Click on a City to see the Travel Methods update.  Then click on a Travel Method and see the Country comparisons update.  What’s really neat is how Robin uses different shapes depending on the Travel Method you select.  Try it.

Kalpana Behara submitted this great hand-drawn viz all the way from India (click it to see a larger view).  She’s a cartoonist and a Manchester United fan, but I didn’t count her loyalties against her.  I love the cross-tab view, the good use of colors to categorize the data, and the choice to use a lollipop chart, which emphasize precision (dots) over length (bars).  Her design also makes it easy to see where there are holes in the data.

I’m not sure if Kalpana is trying to tell me something, but there’s a hidden devil on the page.  Subtle indeed…

Tableau Zen Master Joe Mako submitted this simple and clean design built in Tableau.  Needless to say, for anyone that knows Joe, he did a great job of using colors, particularly the shading within categories and is an overall good technical re-design.  What sets John apart from Joe is his story telling.

Jon Schwabish’s entry was also built with Adobe Illustrator and it’s very similar to Joe Mako’s, except it takes up much more space.  I like how the color of the headers correspond to the colors of the bars. That’s a nice visual cue.  Jon also added some very helpful text.

Thank you to all of those that entered! It was a lot of fun reviewing each submission.  I was amazed at how different people can look at the same data.

And again, congratulations to John Matyskiel!  You’re sweatshirt is on the way.

I’ve been gone for a few weeks enjoying some much needed time off before changing jobs and moving to the west coast.  I’m hopping back into the blog saddle with a series of posts about different charts type, their strengths and weaknesses, when to/not to use them, etc. 

The posts will include step-by-step instructions for creating the charts in Tableau.  The instructions for many of these charts have been written before and I will reference the authors whenever I know about their work.

I will typically use a chart I’ve found on the internet in order to provide variety of examples and also to provide a forum for discussing the strengths and weaknesses of their chosen designs.

Let’s get right to it with this lollipop chart from The Washington Post (via Chart Porn):

I like the clean design, the use of simple colors, and the excellent use of data-ink ratio of this chart, but there are few issues that immediately stand out to me.  First though, what is a lollipop chart?

I couldn’t find an exact definition, but I think of a lollipop chart as a combination of a bar chart and a dot plot.  Lollipop charts are great for giving you a sense of both length (bars) and precision (dots). 

However, it only makes sense to use the stick of the lollipop when you’re range starts at zero. 

In the example above, the bars start at 60, therefore including the bars could mislead the reader into thinking the retirement age in Malta is five times lower than Austria. In this example, the bars should be removed, which turns the chart into a dot plot.

Another problem with this chart is that there is no particular rationale to the sort.  At first I thought it was ranked buy retirement age from youngest to oldest, but then Spain was listed before the United States.

For the purpose of the rest of this blog post, we’re going to focus on the retirement age only.

Taking the issues above into account, the data could be represented as a simple dot plot:

Or alternatively as a lollipop chart:

Hopefully at this point you understand when and why you would use a lollipop chart.  In the end, it’s basically a bar chart with a bit more emphasis on the exact value of the bar.  CAUTION: Don’t avoid a bar chart simply because a lollipop chart looks cute.  I would nearly always prefer a bar chart over a lollipop chart.

So now onto the instructions for how to build this chart.  (Credit to Andy Cotgreave, who back in his days at The Data Studio wrote similar instructions)

Step 1 – Drag the Country dimension onto the Rows shelf and the Retirement Age measure onto the Columns shelf.  The result is a bar chart.  Click the sort ascending button.

Step 2 – Drag the Retirement Age measure to the Columns shelf again.  The results is the same bar chart side-by-side.

Step 3 – Right-click on the 2nd Retirement Age measure on the Columns shelf and choose Dual Axis

Step 4 - Right-click on the 2nd Retirement Age measure on the Columns shelf and choose Synchronize Axis

Step 5 - Right-click on the 2nd Retirement Age measure on the Columns shelf and uncheck Show Header

Step 6 – Drag the right side of the chart to the left to shrink the view

Step 7 – On the Marks card, click on the triangle (a.k.a. carrot) on the upper-right and choose Multiple Mark Types

The Marks card should now show “All” at the top and there are now arrows for moving left and right through the measures on the Column shelf, e.g., the two Retirement Ages measures.

Step 8 – Click the right arrow on the Marks card once, then:

1. Change the format of the chart from Automatic to Bar
2. Move the Size slider all the way to the left to make the bars as small as possible
3. Remove the Measure Names field from the Color shelf
4. Change the color of the bar by clicking on the colored square.

Step 9 – Click the right arrow on the Marks card again to move to the 2nd Retirement Age field, then:

1. Change the format of the chart from Automatic to Circle
2. Remove the Measure Names field from the Color shelf
3. Drag the Retirement Age measure onto the Label shelf
4. Format the Label to the font color of your choice and set the horizontal alignment to Center to place the label in the middle of the circle
5. Change the color of the circle by clicking on the colored square
6. Resize the circle

Voila! You’re lollipop chart is complete.  After you practice these steps a few times, you’ll be able to build it in under one minute…guaranteed!

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