Getting Started with Google Sheets: Conversation with Ben L. Collins

I recently had the chance to talk with my longtime friend, Ben L. Collins, who is THE Google Sheets instructor. Ben joined as a special guest at Office Hours (special live sessions for full course students where we share ideas and give feedback on each other’s projects). Ben shared about his consulting and training work with Sheets, and his personal take on Sheets – favorite features, surprising features, and so on. The personal insights and reflections you can’t learn just by googling something.
More »

Women in Data

In September, I was invited to speak at a Women in Data panel alongside Rebeca Pop. Women in Data is an international non-profit organization started in 2015 whose mission is to bring women together for career advancement and an opportunity to uplift one another. We talked about our start in data visualization, how to approach data viz problems, data integrity and ethics, how get started (and stand out) in the data viz world and what we see coming in the future for the data viz world.
More »

Designing Visual Appendices for Your Next Report—In Under an Hour

A couple years ago, I worked on a report that summarized survey responses from both universities and their students. Even with hundreds of survey responses and dozens of survey questions, we kept the report’s body to just six pages! How’d we choose which findings to include in the report’s main body?! That can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s much easier to pare down our report’s content when we’ve got appendices to back us up. I’ll walk you through what can – and should- be put into appendices and introduce you to the better version… visual appendices.
More »

Listening to What Data Users *Say* They Need… but Giving Them What They *Actually* Need

I recently had the chance to talk with Zach Bowders on his podcast, Data + Love. Zach is a data analyst, a Tableau Public Ambassador, and passionate about data visualization and data storytelling. We talked about how to distinguish between IT and data professionals, how to narrow what users *actually* need, understanding your audience and how to speak up when data isn’t useful.
More »

Re-envisioning a University’s Monthly Report: Two Reports with Two Different Purposes

“How can I show my audience that 24,000 is a big number??” an evaluator asked me. She’s right; this is challenging. A single number on its own doesn’t tell us anything. Have you heard those (un)professional recommendations like, “Just type the 24,000 in large font so it grabs attention!” or “Add an icon next to the 24,000 to bring it to life!” Sigh. Want to bring numbers to life? We need to compare numbers to something. Here are two suggestions.
More »

Customizing Reports for the Audience with Deven Wisner

When we should follow APA format? When should we not? Earlier this year I sat down with my good friend Deven Wisner about customizing reports for the audience. During this six-minute conversation, we talked about Deven’s current work (he’s a managing partner, professor and student himself!) as well as the advice he gives to his own students.
More »