Show Me The Numbers: Designing Tables And Graphs To Enlighten

Rating:
Summary: The best there is -
Review: - after Tufte. Tufte writes about brilliant, eloquent graphic design. Few writes about competent, legible business presentation. Tufte writes about good art, Few writes about servicable craft. If you've ever seen data presented in Excel, Word, or (god forbid) PowerPoint, you know how much we need competent craft.

The book is gently paced. It's for people who need to present numbers, but may not be wholly comfortable with numbers. It takes the reader by the hand, and walks through a series of very basic steps in reasoning about how a chart communicates, or fails to.

The book is very much oriented towards the chart and graph types that Excel can produce. Like it or not, that makes sense. Excel is what most readers have most acess to, and is what causes some of the ugliest problems. This book addresses those problems.

Few illustrates his points with a number of examples, both good and bad ones. He presents problems to solve, and presents answers to many of them. It's a textbook, and a good one. Its main message is, "Less is better."

This is for anyone who presents information, and for anyone who creates presentation software. I recommend this one.

//wiredweird

Rating:
Summary: A Terrific Guide to Good Data Presentation
Review: After reading "Show Me the Numbers," while preparing to post a review of this exceptional book, I felt compelled to respond to the odd and uninformed comments posted by the reviewer who goes by the name Joey Canuck. His primary criticism seems to be that the book is bloated with more words than necessary to present the content. I couldn't disagree more. Perhaps Mr. Canuck disapproves of the author's approach to teaching, which involves a thorough, step-by-step construction of the concepts, complemented by many practical examples, which I believe to be a sound approach when you intend to help people learn. Just like well designed tables and graphs, the design of this book, without frivolous or distracting content, demonstrates a clear focus on communication.

Contrary to Joey Canuck's claim, this book has nothing to do with Excel, other than instructions that appear in an appendix for using Excel to create a particular graph. The principles and practices taught in this book are software agnostic. Regarding consistency with the principles taught by Edward Tufte, I found this book to be quite true to them, and a fitting application and extension of Tufte's principles to the data presentation needs faced every day in the business world. Canuck's complaint that the first grid line does not appear in a graph until page 207 suggests that he is not very familiar with Tufte's teachings, which would deem grid lines in most business graphs as "chartjunk." Actually, the first graph with grid lines appears on page 4, but as an example of the poor design that is common in business today.

A big part of my work involves the creation of reports, consisting largely of tables and graphs. I must often fight for the need to keep the presentation of data simple and clear. "Show Me the Numbers" provides me with the support I need to do this effectively and compellingly.


Rating:
Summary: Use Excel (or PowerPoint)? Read this book
Review: As a consultant I need to gather and analyze data and transform it into information and findings. This book leads you through the transformation of data - especially if you use Excel or PowerPoint - by showing how to select the best table and chart formats to convey the information aggregated from data.

The thrust of the book is communicating. The author lays a solid foundation early in the book by covering qualtitative relationships, summarization and various data types. He then builds upon the foundation with succinct discussions and advice on selecting tablular formats and the correct charts to convey the information.

While Excel is the principal tool used to illustrate the concepts and techniques in the book, I have applied the author's advice to Visio and PowerPoint, as well as a few more obscure charting and graphics programs.

I like the clarity with which the information is presented, and the practical examples given throughout the book. More importantly, this book isn't a tome that is aimed at graphic designers, making it an ideal resource for technical and business professionals who do not fully grasp the nuances of graphic presentation.

If you present data and information - using any application - I strongly recommend this book because it will make your presentations meaningful and easy-to-understand, and will show you how to avoid a plethora of common mistakes like using the wrong chart or impossible to understand tables.

Rating:
Summary: The first practical guide to presenting information
Review: As a person who's created reports, dashboards and analytical products professionally for the last 20 years, I've found information design skills took years to acquire the hard way. I'm a big fan of the literature from people like Edward Tufte, but applying it to everyday work is too abstract for most people.

This book fixes all that, by providing practical, straightforward best practices to handle the situations that come up in the real world. It shows many examples of typical bad designs, why they are bad, and how to fix them, in a way that makes learning the techniques easy.

Besides that, it's a beautifully finished book that can serve as both a text and a reference

Rating:
Summary: A Must-Study Book for the Business Professional
Review: I highly recommend this book because it teaches the critical skill of designing tables and charts essential for every business professional. Our fact-based corporate culture requires us to effectively explain and motivate through the use of tables and charts. It is the `bread-and-butter' of business intelligence.

As a practical teach-me-the-skill book, Stephen Few has created 'Show Me The Numbers' by taking well-grounded principles (from Tufle and others) and by artfully applying them. The title echoes throughout the book as the recurring theme. The book unfolds design principles based on context and relationships. Through a series of practice exercises, the author has shown a sincere interest in teaching the reader this skill. Stephen nudges the reader to think about the proper design that clearly tells the story embedded in the numbers and to communicate that story accurately and honestly.


Rating:
Summary: A Really Great Book on Information Visualization
Review: Not enough attention is given to how we display and present information to business users. This unique book is a must buy for anyone designing executive dashboards or needing to understand how to display information in a meaningful way to different types of business users.

Rating:
Summary: Turning Data into Information
Review: Steven Few's book is a must read for anyone who needs to find a better way to turn confusing data into useful information. The book is comprehensive, readable, and shows by copious example that there is a better way to get your point across.

Rating:
Summary: An absolute "must" for Business School students
Review: This book is the first real effort to address the poor quality of business graphics that have been so easily produced with the proliferation of personal computer software like Excel and Powerpoint. Few's insights are intelligent, well-thought out and practical enough to be understood and implemented by every businessperson.

I've always been a big fan of Edward Tufte, but never felt that his books provided enough practical guidance for analysts and knowledge workers. Show Me the Numbers fills that void and provides readers with a framework for not only designing superior business graphics, but more importantly, communicating effectively with an audience.

Business schools should make this book mandatory for all students.

Rating:
Summary: So much ink, so little content
Review: This is a beautifully designed and produced book containing page after turgid page of mostly banal observations. To say this book belabours the obvious only hints at the author's apparent belief that the reader is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. For instance, do we really deserve, 57 pages into the book, a rambling, one-paragraph definition for "line?" (Yes, it's what you think it is.)

At best the book is an overwrought style guide for Microsoft Excel, and thankfully steers the reader away from using Excel's most abominable "features." At worst it makes a hash of the very principles espoused by Edward Tufte the author claims to uphold.

While most of the example graphs are mediocre at best (the first grid line is sighted on page 207, after we've seen dozens of examples that cry out for them), it's the writing that drags the book, and the reader, down. The author goes on and on about how to present data in its sparest form by excising redundant and unnecessary ink. Had he applied the same zeal for economy to his writing the book would be a third as long and a lot more readable.