Lying graphics cheapen the graphical art everywhere … When a chart on television lies, it lies millions of times over; when a New York Times chart lies, it lies 900,000 times over to a great many important and influential readers. — E. Tufte, Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 1983

  1. Visualization

    1. Hans Rosling’s The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen, 2006.

      1. Specify how many dimensions of the data Rosling’s visualizations tended to present.

      2. Explain the danger of using average data.

      3. Identify Rosling’s key point and explain why you agree/disagree with him.

    2. Misleading Graph

      1. Give a one-sentence definition of the term misleading graph.

      2. Be familiar with the following misleading graph methods:
        • Excessive usage
        • 3D Pie Charts
        • Improper scaling
        • Truncated graphs

    3. Chartjunk

      1. Give a one-sentence definition of the term chartjunk.

      2. Identify the person who coined the term. Note that this person is the same person who popularized the use of sparklines.

  2. Chapter 3

    1. Be able to define the chart types listed in Tables 3.1 and 3.2, particularly column/bar, pie, line, scatter/bubble charts, and describe the contexts in which each is most useful.

    2. Explain what a spark line is designed to do.

  3. Chapter 4

    1. List the basic operations that Excel supports for tables.

    2. What is the general purpose of these operations?