Discussion on:

The 10 best ways to visually represent IT data

The oval shaped "perspective" style pie charts are the dumbest thing ever invented. A pie chart has one purpose and one purpose only: to visually represent percentages of a whole. Squashing the chart so that the regions of the circle are distorted renders that chart useless.

Seriously, I do appreciate the knowledge I was able to glean, I can apply it to genning jpgraph PHP charts. I could never figure out what those perplexing bubble charts were good for!

You can do most of the above without paying the Microsoft Tax using a number of free tools. The first one that comes to mind is Google Docs and Jing (pretty sure Jing is free for most things you'd use it for)

The only thing I can see is advertising for Microsoft Visio and Excel. The article Title infers that it is going to cover different types of charts - not focus solely on the programs the author thinks are good at displaying them.

What I wanted to see included:
1. A particular type of dataset
2. The type of chart/graph best for displaying it.
3. (Optional) some various tools/programs to display it.

Give this article a D.

The dumbest thing ever invented was wicker underwear by Edna Thrushmoore of Pratt's Bottom, Kent. Seriously though, The information in the so-called perspective view pie chart is easily interpreted, especially if there are only two categories (used vs. unused) and the data is also presented as a true percentage alongside the visual. Enough anti-pie chart Chauvinism! Once in a while, even the lowly pie chart can be useful, particularly when reporting something as simple as free disk space. This was the author's point: different graphs for different tasks! I will concede, however, that 4-dimensional hyper-pie charts can be somewhat difficult to evaluate, even more so when viewed edge-on.

In my opinion, the best tool for presenting network architectures is Packet Tracer. It allows me to quickly put together a map of our network both in the logical and the physical sense to show to execs, who may or may not have the knowledge to grasp an entirely logical map, like you present, but need some simplification.

I guess when the charting technology available was rulers, protractors and compasses, pie charts were OK. Even now, they're probably OK for data sets with seven or fewer segments (see George Miller for why seven.) So, technically, for free disk space, which is two segments - free and not-free - it'll work. But for every other application, the "treemap" (see WinDirStat for an especially good [and free] version) is a superior representation of the allocation of a whole to parts.

Consider Six Sigma, as it gives one additional tools for viewing data. One thing we sometimes fail to see is the variation a process generates. Tools like Run Charts, Box Plots can show you not only Averages (mean or median) but also the variation (Q1 - Q3). For example, one could use these tools to see how the average and variation of the temperature/humidity of your data center.

lumps of data. If you wanted to show best, then you needed some not best ways of showing the same data.

Just something to think about next time you present some data on the best way to present something....

I think that for seeing "where's all my disk space gone", SequoiaView from the University of Eindhoven has to rank pretty highly.
If this article were more than a thinly-veiled ad for Microsoft products and some proper research had been done, I'd've expected to see more innovative and unusual ways to view your data such as this.

Website: http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/sequoiaview//

Rick

Excellent selling for MS

I think that MS Excel is an exceptionally excellent tool with which you can carryout the most (if not all) of above listed data representation

Would be a good idea if you can do a listing of tools that comes free which can get you similar results.

But I'm not out to give a tutorial on OpenOffice or equivalent.

Microsoft Visio and Six sigma both are good tools, view the video for more insights on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b52ESzpNFHA

The problem with bubble charts is that the they represent numbers through the area of the bubble. This is a problem because area increases as a square of the diameter. Linear dimensions, like diameter, are what people interpret best. Expecting people to understand Pi-r-squared is unrealistic. A bubble chart that has twice the diameter does not have twice the area (it has more).

Vertical bar charts work because the horizonal dimension is fixed. The vertical dimension varies in a linear fashion compared to the others.

In your bubble chart example, you actually provided redundant information. The x axis represented the number of servers, which you also represented with the size of the bubble. Completely unnecessary.

You're missing an item that is woefully lacking in IT. Dependency Mapping - the ability to determine which systems would be affected if this server went offline, etc. My company had spent several months writing an application that did this, and then we ran across Blueprints by Pathway Systems, which is incredible. We dumped our own product, and were up and running with Blueprints in no time. It's helped us immeasurably in our Disaster Recovery planning. http://www.pathwaysystems.com/products/blueprints/

What's the cost?

I got excited when I saw the headline, but the article doesn't say anything about what I expected: diagramatic representations of corporate / business data, such as ER diagrams. For an IT Business Analyst, needing to regularly give detailed yet intelligible representations of corporate data and relationships, and not having access to a full blown CASE type tool, I've used MS Access, and Powerpoint. I had several bad experience with Visio - it was very buggy a few years back, and don't go near it these days. Any other suggestions.

Pie Charts are great for estimating fractions and percentages by seeing angles, but only if the are circular and not "in perspective" where they appear elliptical on the screen. Why did not Microsoft see this rather than the elliptical view in the diagrams for disc free space? Simple is often best!

The book was an eye opener for me. Too often the tools dictate the presentation not the need to communicate ideas. For example, how many times have you seen a used car with a sign in the window with a big picture of a car and unreadable text (at least while driving by)? If the sign maker were concerned with communicating to the possible buyer, they'd put a price and a phone number on the card and let the fact that it is ON THE CAR imply that the car is for sale.
Instead the person building "templates" for presentation has to put a picture of a car on it so the mindless end user will "use the right template" when making Car For Sale signs! Absurd, but entertaining!
Tufte's books are a bit pricy but worth the read. Library is a good source as its not something you'll need to reference over and over.

I've been making network diagrams (and other similar things) for years with Visio, and I can't say I've ever considered it a good tool for much of anything. Sure, it's functional, but it ranks right up there with "root canal" on my list of things I want to have to deal with in a day.

Hi Rick! Good Post I say. Excellent when your boss would want you to make a management level PPT for chunks of IT data. I think this post more or less covers all aspects of IT data - performance, space, architectures, etc.!
Thanks!
- @annoyket

I shall apply the principles involved but prefer to substitute good Open Source equivalents for most of my clients now.

Hi. This is a great post. So many ways to present data. I thought I would chime in here with the way we present data in the detailed area of configuration analytics where proposing an actionable dashboard for remediation is key in avoiding IT incidents. Hope our way of doing things can bring you some insight.

???Evolven has introduced a change control solution that discovers all changes in real time, analyzes their impact, detects the rogue ones, and proposes an actionable dashboard for remediation. It connects to the service desk change requests to determine what was authorized,??? writes Jean-Pierre Garbani, VP, Forrester Research.

I invite you to check out:
Speed, Complexity and Change - Facing the Pitfalls of Configuration Management
http://www.evolven.com/blog/speed-complexity-and-change-todays-pitfalls-facing-configuration-management.html

Best,

Alex Gutman
Technology Evangelist
Evolven Software, Inc.
alexg@evolven.com
http://www.evolven.com

I believe that would come in handy, no?

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