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Life Beyond Pie

People in the information technology business often encounter Excel experts who revel in showing off their superior charting and graphing skills to those lacking comparable facility with the application. While I am very impressed that they are able to get as much as they are able to with it, I can safely say I have seen one pie-chart too many that conveyed zero information.

This article talks about better visualization and notes that a chart (pie or otherwise) is sometimes not nirvana.

Above all, we should remember that throwing data into a chart is not always the route to greater understanding. Says Spence: “There is a place for tables in the world.”

I could not agree more. Mashable's post on some cool data visualization tools is worth checking out for anyone who is curious about life beyond the pie and other graphing cliches.
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