In this episode of In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris talk about how to work with data and visualize it more effectively. Data visualization is a skill not taught in schools, and it’s equal part art and science. Tune in to hear their tips about what’s the best way to use different charts and graphs, what reports should contain, and much more.

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What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.

Christopher Penn

In this week’s in your insights we’re talking about crimes against numbers, visualization of data and data storytelling. We’ll start off by saying I saw this horrendous, horrendous chart in the news. So I’m going to put like five different pie charts next to each other, trying to illustrate some kind of comparison about voting and the end 2020 candidates. And we’re not going to talk about the politics all but the fact that someone tried to tell a story about using five in pie charts, all with different colors is a crime against numbers. And so let’s start off today. Like when we’re talking about communicating intelligently with data. Katie, what is some of the most egregious misuse that you’ve seen other than, like, I’ll start off by saying pies for eating, not for communicating data.

Katie Robbert

can come out of the box with things like Excel, or any of those other types of software programs.

I think people just don’t know how to properly communicate with that type of visualization. And it is tough, it’s not something that people get right right away. I mean, how many times do I go back to you and say, I don’t get it, let’s do it again. Because I think what happens is the data itself gets over complicated. And then when you try to put it into a very simple chart or graph,

I think that that’s where it kind of gets mucked up. And so I think, also, if we go back even a step farther, the difference between a chart and a graph, or a visualization or a pie chart, or bar chart, or a line chart, like I think all of those things, they’re so nuanced. And they each have their own specific use and how they tell the story. But who’s teaching that I remember when I was in grad school, and I wasn’t in grad school, right out of college, I was in grad school in my late 20s. So I had been working for a while. And in my stats class, my professor gave us an assignment. And he was like, and part of the deliverable part of your homework is to create some kind of a chart with this data. Now, I’d never learned how to make charts in excel at that point in my career. And I was in my mid 20s, and I remember I had asked him that question goes, it’s not my job to teach you. You just need to Google it. And so I had like a mini meltdown, because I was like, how did I ge