About

DataVisuals.XYZ is a notebook of chart guides written by the DataVisuals Team. It is for people who need to make a chart today and want it to be clear: analysts putting together a monthly report, marketers charting campaign results, students working on a project, anyone who has stared at a spreadsheet and wondered which chart to use.

What you'll find here

The chart guide has one page per chart type, from the bar chart to the treemap. Each page explains what the chart is good at, when another chart would work better, and the mistakes we see most often.

The guides cover the decisions that apply to every chart: choosing a chart type, color, labels, accessibility and data storytelling. A second group of guides deals with one data source in depth, the analytics you can get from X (Twitter).

The tools section describes what common charting tools are good at and where they get in the way. The blog has shorter notes and chart makeovers.

How the pages are written

We write for a reader with a real chart to make, so the pages favor concrete advice over theory. The examples use everyday data like sales, web traffic, surveys, sports and weather. The figures are drawn for each page. Their numbers are illustrative, but they are internally consistent, and every caption describes what the figure actually shows.

We update pages when advice needs to change or when a tool changes how it works. Each page shows the date it was last updated. If you find an error, something out of date, or an explanation that doesn't make sense, please tell us through the contact page. Corrections are welcome and we fix mistakes as soon as we can confirm them.

No ads, no tracking

The site has no advertising, no tracking scripts and no sponsored content. Nobody pays to be mentioned, and the tool pages don't use affiliate links. The privacy page explains what little data is processed when you visit.