Draw Charts with Google Visualization API

9lessons.blogspot.com

16 points·sinu9i··6 comments

Their Charts API, which gives back images for specially formatted URLs, is pretty impressive, too. (It is hands-down the easiest way I know to get analytics data onto a cell phone. You pretty much need a wrapper for your language of choice because the API is very primitive and otherwise you're going to waste time reinventing things like "scaling the chart so that it fits all its data", but otherwise its great.)

Edward Tufte and Howard Wainer both recommend bar- or pointcharts for the tasks other people would use piecharts for.

-- http://www.usf.uni-osnabrueck.de/~breiter/tools/piechart/war...

But with pie charts it's easier to cheat http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/02/macworlds-iphon/ :)

Thanks for the link! I noticed that it was harder for me to memorize information from pie charts, but didn't know why.

I would also recommend checking out Stephen Few's books (Information Dashboard Design and/or Show Me the Numbers) for quick and useful guidelines on visually communicating data. Few is a big advocate of Tufte's work and books, and he has a nice set of good vs bad practices in Information Dashboard Design.

I've been an evangelist for Few's books and practices as a "best" starting place for those of us less naturally gifted at data visualization (especially for simpler data or business purposes). He has heavily influenced how I look at typical IT charts and graphs.

Still, any of those are far better than Log charts: http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2605/2605120...

Charts are great especially when you know what you are looking at.

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