Data at Work: Best practices for creating effective charts and information graphics in Microsoft Excel (Voices That Matter)

An excellent book with an abundance of practical examples. Great visualization for buffs of Excel. My favorite charts from the book were the lollipop charts (Figure 5.17), which I have not used in the past. They are clear, elegant, and practical. My second favorite charts were the Excel charts that looked like they were rendered in the 18th century (Figure 5.18 & Fig 5.19). The final charts that I admired were the charts that looked like expensive infographics (Figure 11.7).

Two handy sources mentioned: 1) colorbrewer2.org, which helps you select good color palettes for maps and charts; 2) gapminder.org/dollar-street view of families around the world living on different amounts of income. Interestingly, families around the world are similar not because of the location but rather income.

A great companion website at dataatworkbook.com has all the Excel examples listed in the book. It is helpful to be able to replicate the visuals with your data. Unfortunately, the book doesn't show you how to do the visualization in Excel, and even having the Excel example files is hard to do, but I guess you have to pick up an Advanced Excel book for that.

The book does go a bit too much into some theories, such as visual perception; however, it is an excellent guide for successful Excel visualization.

Rating: 4.2

Readability: 4

Scope: 5

Detail: 4.5

Format: 4

Clarity: 3.5