Bella consults

People who handle real-time data love tickers. People who love to use their screen real estate efficiently love them, too. Movement substitutes display width. People who hate too much program interaction love them even more. All important information passes by automatically. Bissantz tickers stock quotes on his website. With sparklines, naturally (since April 2005). I think, this is only the beginning of using tickers for management information.

Ticker for the Dow Jones Industrial Index (DJI):

Ticker data is updated daily. It displays the last 60 days. The blue band represents the standard deviation from the average. Every sparkline is scaled individually. Minimum and maximum are important to compare volatility of stock quotes. You can include the ticker on your own web page. You only need the following piece of HTML. New data arrives automatically.

‹marquee scrollamount=”1” scrolldelay=”5″><img src=”http://www.bissantz.de/sparkserver/images/ticker-dj.png” height=”20”/></marquee›

And you can create a ticker with your own data. Read here how to do it.

Yesterday was perfect. He stumbled over Maeda’s lifecounter. Ten minutes later we left the office – and spent the rest of the day in the woods. (Thanks, John!)

Today is different. I heard him gnarl, “Damned statistics!”. Then he sat down at his desk. And hasn’t moved since. *sigh* Maybe tomorrow…

OK… I’ll blush a little now: Some fans wanted to see me again with my ski outfit and others asked whether dogs celebrate New Year’s Eve, too.

Dogs do celebrate New Year’s Eve and they don’t handle it any better. And thanks for the fan post from all those Leo users.

What is better: tables or charts? That was discussed in the past. Some said a chart is worth a thousand words. I think a picture is worth a thousand words. And most charts need a thousand words to be explained. They are so awful, mostly. Because it is so hard to standardize a chart and there are lots of things that can go wrong. Bissantz loves graphic tables. Me too. Charts are tightly integrated into tables. You have the best of both worlds in one concept. Graphic tables are easy to standardize and you can integrate almost every chart type in a table. Sparklines provide time-series. Horizontal bars are good for almost all types of comparisons. Graphic tables maximize data-to-ink ratio. They are fine grained and with high resolution. The graphical elements provide easy orientation for your eyes. The numbers provide all the details. Typical problems of legends and labeling never arise. I provided some examples in the “Radar chart trap” and in “Small things that make a big difference”. Today, I explain how to create waterfall charts in tables.

A waterfall chart is a variant of a bar chart. It shows how an initial value is changed through other values which lead to a final value. In Excel, you can use invisible columns but this is tricky. Rolf has a nice Excel template for free. Data entry is not so easy. Formatting is very nice.

Jon has programmed an Excel add-in. Formatting is not so easy. Data entry is very nice.

In both cases a chart is the result. If you turn it around it is still readable, perhaps even better.

Turned around it fits perfectly into a graphic table. Subtotals are also easy. This is how Bissantz has done it in DeltaMaster.

It is possible in Excel, too. Just use the REPT function and a few tricks. I show you how in an example Excel sheet.

I know I can see sparklines. And even hear them. But eat them?

As seen in Vienna.

A time-series is a pattern. It climbs upward and descends, patterns are stable or swinging, they change slowly or abruptly. The pattern is more important than the actual values. To understand the pattern it helps to read it aloud to yourself. “The first value is the smallest. A steep ascent follows. Then a descent roughly to the bottom again.” Time-series patterns are similar to sound patterns. A sound pattern climbs or descends just like values do. You can hear what you see and see what you hear. If you simultaneously hear and see the same your understanding is faster. Sounds read the pattern to you. Test audio sparklines.

Click on the large speaker symbol to play all patterns.
Click on a small speaker symbol to play a single pattern.

The question was: Do you use your handy for music and photos? 15 % said yes and I do not longer use other devices for both, the rest, 85 % said yes, but I also use other devices. The question was: are you in favor of restricting private use of music CDs? 85 % said no, 15 % said yes. The question was, do you manage a blog, a podcast or a video podcast. 70 % said, none of it, 9 % manage a blog, 3 % said yes a podcast, 6 % said yes a video podcast, 6 % said yes two of them, 6 % yes all three.
It took Tomorrow, a German magazine for gadget addicts half a page to hide this small piece of information. At least they summed up correctly to 100 % in each case…

If a graphic is needed to compare the values (is it?) try this:

Small things make a big difference. In design, too. When designing small things, even smaller things make an even bigger difference. Also in designing Edward Tufte’s sparklines. Sparklines come from Pixelland. Here people count every pixel. One pixel too much can ruin a whole sparkline. One pixel too few can do the same.

A good sparkline still needs good presentation:

1. Sparklines add figures and do not replace them.

Sparklines are most beautiful in tables. Normally, tables show numbers for some point in time. Sometimes, we want to know how it was before. Always, actually. Analysis means comparison. Sparklines can show each value’s history. It is wrong however to replace numbers with a sparkline.

So far: Current results for German basketball premier league

Wrong! Sparklines instead of numbers

Right! Sparklines AND numbers

2. Sparklines love colors but do not depend on them.

Publishers lamely excuse themselves for ignoring sparklines: color is so expensive! Sparklines work perfectly without any coloring.

single-colored	multi-colored

3. It’s not a sparkline without a number.

People often wonder which values a sparkline shows. This is because people forget to provide the number for the last data point. A sparkline cannot be read without. The number corresponds to the most recent value of the shown time series. This is enough to understand the value’s history.

wrong	right

4. The number belongs to the right.

If people do not forget the number, they place it left. Things which belong together must be shown adjacent. A number on the left side signals that it corresponds to the first value of the sparkline. So, the number is always on the right hand side.

Source: www.businessweek.com, as of 12/12/2006.

5. Scaling is meaning.

Note! Scaling is important. People love to lie with engineered scales. Sparklines are very small. So, scaling is very important. Often, you show multiple sparklines for comparison. On a common scale, pattern and magnitude are compared. But this only works for similar values. If scaled individually, the pattern is depicted. Look at the numbers to compare magnitude.

Bars within table cells help to compare.

6. Bars or lines?

Bars are read more easily. They consume more space though. I take bars for short series and lines for longer ones. Mostly.

small series	long series

SparkMaker helps to draw sparklines.

In our company, people think a lot about how to present figures well. ‘Well’ means that everybody is able to quickly grasp what they mean. That gives us more time to brood over their impact.

Things become difficult when it comes to radar charts.

The same data is much better off in a graphical table. The most important fact emerges immediately: I am always above average!

Here at the office, they make software that draws these tables automatically. In Excel you would use the Repeat function. That’s quite simple: a vertical bar is repeated as many times as the corresponding data value prescribes. That yields a nice bar inside the cell. You can even label it if you concatenate the value with the “&” character. Here is a sample how that works.

Sometimes self-doubt is overcoming him.

My friend Vivi has disappeared. The New York Times helps to find her. They packed everything they know about Vivi into a single graphic, adhering to my reporting standards. Photo, text, data, graphics – everything is integrated, in order to provide information about places, time, frequency and circumstances. ET would say: Beautiful Evidence!

New York Times, Saturday, Nov 18th, 2006, page B2.

Welcome to my blog. My name is Bella. I am the office dog at Bissantz & Company in Nürnberg, Germany. ET says everybody should use my reporting standards.

For instance, you can label things directly, even in photos. There is no need for circumstantial legends. Every legend codes something which later needs to be decoded again. That’s no fun unless you are a secret service agent.