Boo! Scary charts in honor of All Hallows Eve

This post was kindly contributed by Business Intelligence Notes for SAS BI Users - go there to comment and to read the full post.

In the United States today is the scariest day of the year – All Hallows Eve. Tonight school children will run around dressed as monsters or Angry Birds demanding a treat from their neighbors.  So here some treats for the SAS Business Intelligence users building charts and graphs.   A few weeks ago I told you about my arch enemy the pie chart. Here are some of other line charts and bar charts that missed the mark from an overzealous report builder.  These charts were created using the sample SASHELP.ARRESTS data. [More here on sample data sources] Is this a NYC street during rush hour or a chart? This line chart is spooky because it is so busy.  The background is indeed fancy and certainly has a lot of information. How will the user interpret anything on this chart? If the chart builder was intent on keeping the background, here is how you can rescue the data.  Remove the data labels and darken the plot area. At least the user has a better chance of determining the trends and making some observations about the data. For instance, why is AgeGroup3 so involved in crime while AgeGroup1 is not so active?   Stars and stripes […]

This post was kindly contributed by Business Intelligence Notes for SAS BI Users - go there to comment and to read the full post.