Dataviz Caveat Flashcards

I hope you're doing well on your side of the planet.

Here, spring is finally peeking through. I'm writing this from a hammock, with a lazy cat napping beside me and my kid playing with flowers. Love it!

Anyway, you're not here for daydreaming but to sharpen your dataviz skills, so let's get into it.

Good chart !== bad chart

I've been building charts and teaching dataviz for a while now, and one thing always strikes me: the same common mistakes pop up over and over.

Some of them are so severe that they can completely distort your message or, even worse, mislead your audience.

If you want to level up your dataviz game, a solid first step is reviewing these common pitfalls to make sure you avoid them in your next project.

That's exactly why I'm building the Dataviz Caveat Gallery.

Check the gallery

Not making these mistakes doesn't guarantee a great chart. But falling into one of them guarantees a bad one. So let's avoid that!

Rank your Barplot

Another example is this simple but often overlooked rule: always sort your barplots!

Why? Because it instantly makes the ranking clear. Your reader knows who's first, who's last, and the relative order of every group.

I know this sounds basic, but trust me, I've explained this at least 653 times in my career. Read this once, and you'll never forget it.

37 examples and counting

The gallery currently has 37 examples. For each one, I'm creating a "dataviz flashcard": a quick, visual way to absorb these lessons.

I hope it's going to be a powerful way to level up someone's dataviz game.

Also, I will heavily use those cards in my 2 dataviz courses: Matplotlib Journey and Ggplot2 Uncharted.

Your thoughts?

I'd love to hear what you think about this idea, as these cards are a huge investment of my time:

• Do you find them useful?
• Do you like the way they look? How can I improve?
• What other common mistakes should I add to the list?

Please drop me an email and thanks so much for your input!
Yan