

Draw Charts with Google Visualization API - sinu9i
http://9lessons.blogspot.com/2009/05/draw-charts-with-google-visualization.html

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patio11
Their Charts API, which gives back images for specially formatted URLs, is
pretty impressive, too. (It is hands-down the easiest way I know to get
analytics data onto a cell phone. You pretty much need a wrapper for your
language of choice because the API is _very_ primitive and otherwise you're
going to waste time reinventing things like "scaling the chart so that it fits
all its data", but otherwise its great.)

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uggedal
Edward Tufte and Howard Wainer both recommend bar- or pointcharts for the
tasks other people would use piecharts for.

\-- [http://www.usf.uni-
osnabrueck.de/~breiter/tools/piechart/war...](http://www.usf.uni-
osnabrueck.de/~breiter/tools/piechart/warning.en.html)

~~~
tom_b
I would also recommend checking out Stephen Few's books (Information Dashboard
Design and/or Show Me the Numbers) for quick and useful guidelines on visually
communicating data. Few is a big advocate of Tufte's work and books, and he
has a nice set of good vs bad practices in Information Dashboard Design.

I've been an evangelist for Few's books and practices as a "best" starting
place for those of us less naturally gifted at data visualization (especially
for simpler data or business purposes). He has heavily influenced how I look
at typical IT charts and graphs.

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binarycheese
Charts are great especially when you know what you are looking at.

