Charts

The basic types of charts include line charts, area charts, bar charts, scatterplots and pie charts. How should you decide which one to use? And how can we make them?

Housekeeping

• Project timeline. Are you on track for success?
• Alex, Hannah and Katie are leading a discussion on Writers' Sleep Habits and Productivity

More lecture than we’ve ever had before

• Choosing a good chart and a reduced version
• What are you trying to say?
• How can you use design to help you say it?
• Some chart examples
• Some general design help or more

Your goal

• Before class is over, post a bar chart about plastic surgery (thanks Ronan) and/or a line chart about drought (thanks Katie) to your github page
• Style a paragraph of text below your chart (it can be lorem ipsum), borrowing inspriration from the way Medium styles their paragraphs

Your team choices

• Team Excel
  • You might follow Cole Nussbaumer’s guide.
• Team Service
  • You might try out Datawrapper or Chartbuilder
• Team Be in Charge
  • You might try out D3

Variance has a nice description of some of the trade-offs. And people are working on tools, like Lyra, that blend some of your options.

Homework

Continue to make tangible progress on your project. Are you on track for success?