Know the Elements of Charts

You have learned about the advantages of viewing data in a visualization instead of spreadsheet or table, and you are ready to understand more about reading charts. A well-designed chart should be easy to read and understand, and should not mislead. Here's how to be an educated data consumer.

There are three key components of this lesson:

•     Know what elements make up a chart in Tableau. This will help you read the views others create.
•     Ask questions about what you see. Visualizations can be the start of the exploration of your data and will lead to questions - which is a good thing.
•     Watch for misleading charts.

This lesson has a few examples, but there are many ways charts can confuse or mislead. Scrutinize, ask questions, and give feedback to your authors if you are not sure what a chart is attempting to convey.

What does this chart represent?

•     Does the chart or dashboard have a clear title and purpose?
•     Can you understand the chart's intent in a few moments?

Does this chart show any particular patterns or trends?

•     Can you see trends in seasonality (example: every November sales rise)?
•     Does your data have any outliers-data points that stand out as very different from the rest of the data-that should be reviewed or explored more closely?

Is this all of the data?

•     Does it look like the author deliberately excluded or hid relevant data?
•     Can you answer all of your questions with what you see, or do you need more data?

​Is it clear what has been measured, and what the numbers represent?

•     Has the author included helpful notes, labels, and navigational hints?
•     Can you gather useful and actionable data from this chart?