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*Have you encountered many/any box-and-whisker plots in the course of your work? On other dashboards?
I have rarely seen box and whisker plots used and the few times I did encounter them in a few peer reviewed journals I found them hard to decipher and moved on to data representations that were more intuitive.*What about histograms?
I would say I have seen histograms used more frequently than box and whisker plots but also must admit I believe in hindsight I simply considered them bar charts with different formatting.*If you have little or no prior experience with them, do you think they are easy to understand? If not, can you think of some alternate ways to display distribution data?
I find histograms more user friendly and they seem to portray the important data more clearly as well as prominently. I can certainly see the use of box and whisker charts but they definitely require prior experience concerning best practices for deciphering the data they are presenting. Either way they are both effective means of illustrating distribution data as long as the individuals reading the data is familiar with them.If the stated purpose was to display trends within the Flores del Mundo’s total membership data then I would choose a line graph without dots in an effort to solely highlight the general trend.
If the total membership data split into employee, spouse, and child was being shown I would use a cluster column bar graph. This sort of graph would allow for the viewer to see the comparisons over time between the 3 subgroups while also seeing the general trend of membership data over the year. This sort of graph can become cluttered so significant time would be spent with color and labels in an effort to make the chart simplistic and intuitive.
If Northern and Eastern were being displayed on the same charts tracking membership trends over the year I would resort back to the line graph without dots in 2 different colors.
The data in the WHO article does not appear to be a dashboard according to perimeters discussed by Alexander. It seems to include more data than needed to support the main purpose and causes the primary message or goal to get lost. This graphic allowed for some user analysis of the data instead of clearly presenting a “predefined conclusion” which is yet another main attribute needed for the designation of dashboard. The use of color in the WHO graphic also makes it challenging to read which again draws attention away from the main focus and according to Alexander dashboards are often most impactful when the formatting is simple.I have to agree with my classmate this does appear to be report rather than a dashboard.
