73 Charts That Break Down Complex Data Into Digestible Information

When it comes to charts, a picture can often speak more than a thousand words. Quite literally. And nowadays, whatever information you’re looking for, whether it be election results, the world’s happiest cities, sports statistics, or even how many cups of coffee people drink in any given week, there’s probably a chart for that.

Were it not for useful charts, we’d need to get important data and information from spreadsheets with endless numbers, or possibly hundreds of pages of stats and words. It can get boring, tiring and overwhelming. Charts turn complicated data into easily digestible visual information that our brains can better manage. They’re often informative, educational, interesting and easy on the eye.

Charts are one of the most powerful communication tools available. They make trends, comparisons, relationships, and useful information pop almost instantly. That's because human beings are visual creatures. Our brains process pictures and visual information more efficiently and faster than a whole bunch of words. We naturally pick up shapes, patterns, symbols and/or changes in a graph.

"Not everyone has the skill or interest required to dig deep into the numbers and pull out relevant trends, but anyone can look at a chart or graph and understand how different elements compare, or contrast, giving them an instant understanding of what the visualization seeks to convey," explains the team at ThoughtSpot, an agentic analytics platform.

We live in a fast-paced digital world with almost too much information available at our fingertips. Businesses track sales and performances, governments monitor populations and crime rates, scientists analyze experiments and studies, and websites collect millions of user interactions on a daily basis.

Without graphs and charts all of this valuable data could easily be impossible to digest.

The best charts are often the ones that allow audiences with different levels of expertise to understand the same information.

"The aim is to tell a good story by translating the data into a form that is easy to understand for everyone," notes Deloitte's site. "Useful information is highlighted and the noise is eliminated from the data."

And that's the point: to tell a good story. If a chart is designed poorly, it can create more confusion than clarity.

"When it comes to misleading data visualizations, pie charts are often the worst offenders," reveals the GoodData.AI team, adding that sometimes pie charts just don't cut it.

"When there are too many slices, a chart becomes cluttered, and the differences between segments are hard to distinguish," they explain. "This overwhelms the viewer and diminishes the chart’s ability to communicate any meaningful insights."

Another thing that can leave people scratching their head is the thoughtless use of color. If random colors are assigned as representations on a chart or graph, it can lead to chaos, clutter, confusion and a rainbow of nothingness. The colors themselves need to tell a good story. And sometimes, it's okay to use just one color instead of a whole bunch.

"While the colors may create an aesthetically pleasing chart, they contribute nothing to our understanding of the data," notes the GoodData.AI site. "In fact, instead of adding clarity, the colors create visual noise that detracts from the data's message."

To create an effective chart, experts advise that you begin by identifying the story you want to tell (comparison, trend, distribution, or composition). "Then select a chart that naturally fits that purpose, like a line chart for trends over time or a bar chart for comparing categories," adds the GoodData.AI team.

SEO copywriter, editor, and content strategist Rachel Nicholson, agrees. The expert reveals that before creating any data-based graphics, she ask herself: "Do I want to convince or clarify a point? Am I trying to visualize data that helped me solve a problem? Or am I trying to communicate a change that’s happening?"

Nicholson says that if she's trying to convince, she'll probably opt for a pie or donut chart. But if she's trying to communicate a change that’s happening, then it largely depends on the specific change.

"For tasks such as communicating a weekly schedule change or reallocating work between team members, I’ll use the Gantt chart," Nicholson explains. "If I’m trying to show an internal change in marketing or sales trends over time, well, it’d likely be time to break out the bar graph."

Either way, a chart or graph can help you get your point across a whole lot easier than a long email or massive spreadsheet containing an overwhelming amount of information.

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