Business Intelligence

Pictures paint 1,000 words. People have been created as visual beings, so the more one can express on pictures the better. One can thus conclude (almost) that the more dimensions one can put into a chart, the more useful it will be. Dead wrong! Let's explore why?!

3D charts create so much more confusion and noise than having things expressed in 2 D. Take a look at some of these 3D charts, some of which look pretty slick and cool. However if the purpose of information is to inform, then these visual representations have just failed the basic premise of what they're trying to do.



Let's discuss this chart and why it has been chosen as a target of criticism. As nice as it is supposed to look, what information are you able to glean from it?

• Fault 1: There are 2 Y Axes and it seems they are calibrated the same. Are they? who knows? Take a wild flying guess, they look the same.
• Fault 2: What is the green line chart supposed to Show, does it cover the Fifth X Axis value?
• Fault 3: Multiple types of charts: Bar charts, area charts and a line chart? Why does each month have a different type of chart when months belong to the same dimension and grain?
• Fault 4: What is the purpose of the 3rd dimension?

Let's look at this slightly better one to "tear it apart"
Faults: the third dimension can hide some of the detail, for instance, the 2nd series of Thursday seems almost hidden from view, so that we cannot get a really good picture.

A much better option here would be to have side by side vertical bar charts for each series, so for each day, we would have 2 bars, a red one (series 1) and a pink one (series2).


What is wrong with this one?
Well, once again, the 3rd dimension causes the first few series to hide the detail of the series that are shown behind.

How can I know for sure the value of Monday at 18:00? I can only assume (ass-u-me, making an ass of you and me) that it follows the trend, but the precision is lost in guesswork. This chart has failed to accurately inform me of the full picture, so in my opinion, is near-useless unless I am happy with making a decision on a partial picture where I get to guess the rest!


So now what could I possibly find objectionable about this beautiful flash chart?

Once again, I can only guess the values for 3rd Quarter for West & South ?

What if the first series (East, the lightest colour) had higher values than the other 2 series? I would not even get a glimpse at the other values.

Bottom line (finally!) folks (my opinion):
Avoid 3D not just in dashboards, but in charts as a whole.
3d seems forgivable when you have a very specific thing that you are trying to show and have good justification for the 3rd dimension but chances are you are probably better off avoiding them in general.

See Edward Tufte's thoughts at http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/
also, Peter Thomas has similar ideas on the subject. See here: