You should spend twice as much time on the presentation of the data as you do finding insights to present. Otherwise your data will never drive important decisions because the people that make those decisions are busier and less technical than you are.
Improving the presentation of data to remove noise and get to the core of what you're trying to communicate (data ink), so that you can be more effective in driving important decisions...More
I need to talk to you about a chart
First, I just want to say I thought about it and this is one of the most important insights in the whole presentation!
Knowing that 2/3rds of our ad spend goes on variations we eventually turn off is very important for our discussion with investors
It shows how much we need to spend to find a winning variation
That said, the way you presented it... needs some work
I'm not sure if you've ever taken a data visualization course, but I'm about to blow your mind
Let me send you a blog post on the 'data ink' ratio
This course is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, data, places, events and incidents in this course are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The concept of data-ink comes from Edward Tufte, in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. He described data-ink as the "non-erasable core of the graphic", meaning stripping away anything redundant to get to the core of the story you're telling with the data.
Most charts suffer from too much redundant information or noise, which can make them hard to read. Most people, in particular important decision-makers, don't spend as much time with data as the person who made the chart, so there's a constant danger of miscommunication that must be addressed.
Data-ink is what's left over when you remove anything that's not directly supporting the message of the chart. The default charts and popular features available in Excel or GSheets often run counter to best practices for conveying information. By removing redundant labels, increasing font size, getting rid of special effects, and other simple rules, you can make an immediate impact on a chart's effectiveness.
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