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A Good Chart is a Story [Charting Principles]

  • Last updated on May 11, 2009
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A good chart tells a story. It is as simple as that.

Here is a fantastic example of what a good chart is. See the Time spent eating vs. National obesity rate chart below
obesity-rate-vs-time-spent-eating
It takes may be 5 seconds to understand what the chart is. And then you know the story. What is more interesting is, it instigates the readers curiosity to ask questions and understand the data. For eg.

  • Q: Why obesity is high in countries where they spend less time eating?
  • May be because of the fast food
  • Q: What are the Turkish people eating for 160 minutes a day?
  • May be they like the turkey cold. Okay, bad joke

The chart itself is very simple and easy. But it brilliantly juxtaposes two pieces of data: Obesity rates in countries and Time spent eating per day, to tell a story.

Are your charts telling a story?

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution for the chart.

More charting principles: Why KISS is important when it comes to charts | Vizooalization – 5 Lessons from zoo on visualization

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6 Responses to “Using Lookup Formulas with Excel Tables [Video]”

  1. Damian says:
    November 9, 2010 at 8:20 am

    H1 !
    this is my very first comment.
    Can you use same technique with Excel 2003 lists ?
    thanks 😀

    Reply
  2. Tom says:
    November 9, 2010 at 6:58 pm

    Thanks, Chandoo! I like seeing the sneak peak of what's to come on Friday too 🙂

    Reply
  3. Chandoo says:
    November 11, 2010 at 8:09 am

    @Damian.. Welcome to chandoo.org. Thanks for the comments.

    Yes, you can use the same with Excel 2003 lists too.

    @Tom.. You have seen future and its awesome.. isnt it?

    Reply
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  6. Q.fg says:
    May 4, 2015 at 8:36 pm

    Hi, is there a vlookup formula for the second example (IDlist)? I used a similar formula to look up the ID for the person, but the reverse way (look up the person with the ID) comes up N/A.

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