The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The DOS and Don'ts of Presenting Data, Facts, and Figures

As a marketing analyst my job involves a great deal of analyzing data and turning that data into meaningful information for directors, vp's, etc. I've read just about every book out there on this subject at some point or another. This one is a definite keeper. The kind of book that you'd want to keep on your desk if creating charts and graphs is something you do regularly. If you follow these principles your presentations will stand out from the crowd. I am always shocked by the rarity, within corporate America, of the ability to do this well. The fact is that most top tier MBA's that I've worked with still can't get past the default settings in Excel to even figure out how to get rid of the gray backroung on their charts--let alone follow best practices such as those espoused by this book and the work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few. Having mentioned Tufte and Few, let me digress for a moment and discuss them. Edward Tufte is the guru of data visualization and it's important to point out that this book's author, Donna Wong, studied under the master himself, so you know her credentials are top notch. It's like learning kung fu from the guy that was trained by Bruce Lee. Except he skips all the BS and just shows you how to kick ass. Of course, unlike Bruce Lee, Edward Tufte is not dead and as far as I know has never taken on Kareem Abdul-Jabar in a yellow track suit. He still writes and publishes his own work, but it's far more theoretical, and not as user friendly as, this book is. As for Stephen Few, he is the second biggest name out there when it comes to data visualization best practices. I have one of his books, "Information Dashboard Design," which, while good, provides too many examples of what NOT to do, with not enough examples of best practices, in my opinion. Few also, likely feeling that another author had ventured into his territory, posted a somewhat negative review of this book on his website. I think he was a bit unfair and nitpicky. This book is right to the point and shows the reader how best to present any kind of data in the most effective way possible. It does not, however, get into the specifics of how to do these things with Excel. For that, you may wish to look up an e-book by Charles Kyd who goes into great detail with the best ways to use Excel for the creation of dashboards. I also heartily recommend "Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards" by Ron Person. The second half of which convers a great deal of useful Excel information. Can you tell that this stuff is my life???

In this book, Dona boils down all of the theory from Tufte's work and turns it into useful and practical guidelines for information display. If you're looking to develop guidelines for your company's charting and information graphics, Wong's book is an absolute must-read.

As the Managing Director of an organisatioon that creates high end presentations for clients, as well as train them in the same, we are constantly wrestling with creating infographics that are clear, concise and communicate their message effectively. So, it was with eager anticiaption that I awaited the arrival of Dona Wong's "The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics" and I must say I was delighted after perusing its content. Rarely do your read a book that crystalises all that can be said in an area of communication in a way that Dona Wong has done in this book. Written with a style and clarity that reflects her approach to infographics, it provides an outstanding guide to creating visuals that are clear and to the point. The book is itself an example of communicating without excess whilst delivering a message effectively. (If you have every read Edwarde Tufte's seminal books you will appreciate Dona's clarity) I whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone who needs to create charts, tables or other figures and believe that Dona Wong takes over from where Tufte finished.

I've witnessed many attempts at "quantitative communication" in a complex corporate setting. Most efforts leave the reader/audience either overwhelmed, confused, bored or completely disengaged. Before turning themselves loose with Excel or PowerPoint, the financial and business development folks should do themselves a favor and read this book. Dona combines time-tested design principles (such as those advocated by Edward Tufte) with simplicity of application to help one immediately improve the vast majority of their quantitative communications. Worth it!

This short easy read is a beautiful introduction to how to make professional graphics. Because the WSJ is featured in the title, I was a bit nervous that the entire book would be focused on visualizing financial data but it has great advice for anyone who needs to visualize numeric data. I really enjoyed it because there is unique advice that adds to other practical books on visualization like Creating More Effective Graphs, and it nicely complements or leads into classics like The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition or Visualizing Data. The first chapter covers basic issues like how many colors, what colors, how many lines, etc.. The second, which is the bulk of the book, contrasts effective and poor graphics on side by side pages. There is concise useful advice on truncating ranges, breaking axes, using broken bar graphs, how many pie pieces, etc. The advice is beyond simple do or do not break a bar, it discusses how much of a discrepancy in the height of a bar chart merits a break. While other books have advice that ends with "do or do not use some graphics" (like pie charts), this one has great advice on when it makes sense to do things like break graphics into sets of pictures, use broken bars in bar charts, how and when to set scales (so that graphics afford meaningful comparisons) and how to make the best use of pie charts. There is a short section on descriptive statistics, when to use means, medians, plotting percentages vs actual changes, etc. and there is a surprisingly nice section on the algebra for setting axes which I have never seen written up. The final two chapters deal with specialize topics like plotting financial matters or plotting time series and relations among groups. The only real down side is there is no discussion of what tools to use to make the graphics or how the graphics in this book were rendered. Despite this, the book is superb because it covers the material in adequate detail and it gives insights that are either not covered at all or are scattered across many sources.