This week’s Makeover Monday was considerably “easier” than last week’s in that the data set was only nine data points and was really just a simple makeover of a bad chart choice. As David Pires noted, it might seem like I pick on Business Insider; I can assure you I’m not doing so intentionally. They simple provide simple example that work well for this project. Their fault, not mine.

In researching this makeover, I ran across this article from Walter Hickey, also of Business Insider, titled “The Worst Chart In The World”. In the article, which I encourage you to read, Walter walks through the pretty typical reasons for why pie charts are bad choices. Much of the same argument can be applied to this week’s donut chart, which is basically a pie chart with a whole in it, making it arguably even worse than a pie chart for comparing parts to a whole.

Given the article Walter wrote, it’s a shame to see his ideas not permeating across Business Insider. Any ideas on how we can help him spread the good word about data visualisation?

This week I wanted to apply the simple step-by-step approach to the makeover that I’ve used in the past. The idea was sparked by this article by Darkhorse Analytics. Emily Kund has also told me in the past that she really likes when I apply this step-by-step method to my makeovers because she thinks it’s a better learning experience. The charts I makeover don’t always fit this recipe, but I’ll do my best to use this approach when possible.
So flip through the story points one at a time and watch the makeover unfold. Enjoy!

Last night at the SFBATUG meet up, I had the pleasure of giving a hands-on demo of how to create an interactive calendar in Tableau.  This is a follow up to a post I write in May 2012 detailing how to create the calendar. 

This example goes a step farther in that I’m using the calendar like a widget to control what I’m seeing on my dashboard.  What’s also cool about this method is that you can multi-select dates, something you can’t currently do with date quick filters.

Note that I also demoed how to hide a reference line behind a bar, which I wrote about here.

Finally, this dashboard is not a stellar example of design.  I threw this together quickly so that I could share it with the community promptly.

Download the workbook here.