
Bullet charts – Avoid extraneous details in corporate presentations - tirthbodawala
https://www.atyantik.com/bullet-charts-what-is-it-and-how-to-use-it/
======
rco8786
Neat and potentially useful data vis but copy like this makes me barf: “Bullet
charts have proven to be ideally suited for any business dashboard data
visualization.”

Proven? How? By what standard or metric? And for _any_ business dashboard data
vis? What does that even mean?

~~~
fuzz4lyfe
I like when people communicate in that manner. It let's me know I can safely
tune out as the content will be devoid of information.

~~~
Amygaz
Well, I when through it for you.

There is an example on creating a bullet chart in Excel. It starts with bar
chart, which simple and easy to do and read. It then go through many steps to
abstract and obscure some the information, to get to a chart that the author
find more appealing. I don’t. I think a bar chart as more space and is more
zen, while his chart feels crowded. Unless you start with only 3 bars, in
which case it looks fine and doesn’t obstruct any information.

~~~
p10_user
An unusual chart to convey simple information, and requires explanation, is a
poor way to visualize your data. Only make a unique visualization if necessary
to convey unique data. So, as you said, here just stick with the bar chart!

------
Traubenfuchs
I do not think it is a good idea to present lesser known graph types that need
explanation in an enterprise setting.

~~~
tomrod
This is the kind of chart that my CFO looks at and says, "Well, that is neat.
Now, what are you trying to say?"

~~~
tirthbodawala
Hahahaha..

------
thesehands
blog post with a better explanation of what's going on from Stephen Few - the
designer of the bullet chart:
[https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/misc/Bullet_Graph_De...](https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/misc/Bullet_Graph_Design_Spec.pdf)

~~~
paulgerhardt
Thanks, I read OPs article twice and still didn’t have a clear understanding
for the application of this visualization technique.

Animated it would be useful for an air/fuel gauge project I’m working on for a
track car.

Confined display area, Target stoichiometric value (14.7). Current ratio.
Historical average.

------
rspoerri
i dont see that as a good data visualization. why you might ask? because it's
not self explanatory. while the target bar might be clear, the poor, average
and excellent value feature a different style, while containing similar
information. also it's not possible to have 2 bars at the same height, which
might not be a problem, but the example they are showing has exactly this
problem.

~~~
Kiro
I agree. I skimmed back and forth trying to understand the other bars but had
to read the actual Excel data in order to understand what was going.

~~~
Double_a_92
That's not the fault of the chart type. It's just a bad execution in that blog
post. I.e. the shorter bars should be very light, and feel more like a
backgrund for the actual bar.

If you look at a good example it actually is intuitive:
[https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/misc/Bullet_Graph_De...](https://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/misc/Bullet_Graph_Design_Spec.pdf)

~~~
rspoerri
It doesnt make the graph any clearer in my opinion. the graph uses 3 different
styles of value indicators. the background colored areas, the bar itself and
the "target indicator". discarding the "target indicator" and using
intuitively understandable colors (red/yellow/green) for the background colors
might help, but othervise i dont see this as a easily readable graph style.
especially it cannot be read without prior explanation. If the graph is being
used regularely within a company or group it may well be used.

if you need well established graph styles have look here:
[https://datavizcatalogue.com/](https://datavizcatalogue.com/)

------
Gigablah
This article is a great example of how to pad out your paragraphs by repeating
variations of the same sentence over and over.

------
squeezingswirls
Original article [https://jscharting.com/blog/bullet-
charts/](https://jscharting.com/blog/bullet-charts/)

------
Dumblydorr
As a research scientist, I can not tell you how many scientists straight up
read paragraphs of pre written info off of ppts. So boring and impersonal!

~~~
keldaris
As a research scientist, I can not tell you how many scientists seem to have
watched a few TED talks too many and desperately try to be interesting, never
actually telling me the essence of what they've done instead of some analogy
or a pretty picture.

That being said, I don't disagree with you. The point is to know your audience
and your goals. Trying to be interesting is great for a lay audience, as are
long derivations for a seminar of your peers. Just don't confuse the two.

~~~
WhompingWindows
I think the best way is 3-5 word bullet points, but mostly talking about
tables/charts/figures. If you've truly done the research yourself, you can
easily explain what is behind every chart.

~~~
keldaris
Really depends on the content. If I'm being presented with a mathematical
theorem, for instance, I'd like to read the exact statement at my leisure
while the speaker reads it and then talks about it. Structuring derivations
can also be tricky (omit too many technical details and risk losing the
interesting part of the work). Charts are fine, but for an audience of
scientists the methodology behind the result is often more interesting than
the result.

------
jasonpeacock
Basically a bar-chart version of sparklines:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparkline)

But it manages to actually show _less_ information. Sparklines are nice
because you keep the time axis so we know if the current metrics is improving
or decreasing.

Otherwise just write the number.

~~~
edw
Or, in other words, nothing like a sparkline. This visualization is useful for
gauge-like displays. Sparklines suck at communicating scale or proportion or
context if the context is anything other than recent historical values. I
could see a sparkline — or better yet, a simple yet properly labeled line
graph -- complementing a bullet chart to show historical data. If something
can effectively complement another thing, then they probably are not basically
the same thing.

------
scrumper
A dreadful article on a good topic.

Repetitious, poorly-worded, unclear (the "how to" for Excel contains no actual
instructions).

------
BOOSTERHIDROGEN
Any example from corporate presentations that transform to this ?

