Life's Mysteries

"Why do hot dogs come in packages of ten, but hot dog buns only come in packages of just eight?"

This, one of life's most foundational mysteries, is only eclipsed by "How the heck do I get started on this dashboard?"

Like the Monk With No Name, I'm here for you. And I sense somehow that you have potential, even though those around you think you are full of, well, you know. Just remember, rich manure can fertilize fields which will feed millions.

When we start a new project, it's often difficult to know what the developers built into the script. We tend to float between the table viewer, a bunch of list boxes that we constantly create and delete and change, and maybe the SQL. Then we build a chart or two trying to see what the heck is in the data model. Here's an easy temporary tool you can build that will give you a view into your data while you're building your masterpiece.

Share It!

I'm as guilty, maybe more guilty, as anyone. I love to build the most clever analytical wingding to ever grace the presence of the lowly sales manager's desktop. Witness 'Color Me Crazy' or 'Perfect Probability Pipeline'. That stuff is genius!

But, believe it or not, your users suffer through your creativity in order to get something done. Like selling something that pays your exorbitant salary. It's time to help them.

You can't have two number ones

You can't have two number ones. 'Cause that would be eleven.

Truer words have never been uttered. It's time to help our users highlight the Number One. Some of you may be wondering why you're not seeing a picture of Jet Li. That's just because you haven't learned the wisdom of Cal Naughton, Jr. And you're only beginning to understand the sagaciousness of DJ m*Sight Mike.

It's time to easily, effectively and understatedly highlight your top value in a table.

The challenge is helping your user to easily see what's important. In the example above, it's pretty easy to see that Toronto has the highest sales. But what if the list is 50 cities long? And the values are all roughly the same? Don't make your users hunt through a bunch of data. Point out the answer!

Why didn't I know about ColorBrewer?

There wasn't much to do. All the bowling alleys had been wrecked. So’s I spent most of my time looking for beer. And ways to kill all of the bright colors in your apps. With kindness.

Then the folks over at EagerEyes.Org put together a really good post on rainbows and (I think) unicorns. Did you know that unicorns poop mini marshmallows? And not the plain ones, the colorful ones. Then they casually threw out the quote:

"Everybody in visualization knows ColorBrewer. Everybody. It’s almost silly to link to it again here, because it’s so widely known."

I didn't know about it! And we all know that I'm not just anybody. I'm obviously not everybody. But apparently I'm almost silly.

So, here it is. It's the easiest to use that I've found. http://colorbrewer2.org/ :

But more importantly, you want to know how to WRECK a movie, eh? Take a jar of months into the theater, eh and let .. and then like uh release them at a point in the movie when you know what’s going to happen, eh and then all of the moths will fly up to the projection booth window and cloud it up and you can demand your money back.

Sparkline Some Confusion

Just remember what ol' FortuneCookie Mike does when the earth quakes, and the poison arrows fall from the sky, and the pillars of Heaven shake. Yeah, FortuneCookie Mike just looks that big ol' storm right square in the eye and he says, "Give me your best shot, pal. I can take it."

Except when you present the wrong picture causing your users to make bad decisions. I can't take that.

Color me Crazy

Every smart person loved my post on Highlighting the Trend. It's the sane alternative to a crazy line chart with a bunch of dumb, indistinguishable colors. Unfortunately, there are a few (communists, one-worlders, salespeople) who asked the question, "why aren't all of the lines different colors?"

Well, it got so that every piss-ant prairie punk who thought he could make a graph would ride into town to try out the Waco Kid. I must have charted more data than Cecil B. DeMille. It got pretty gritty. I started to hear the word "draw" in my sleep. Then one day, I was just walking down the street when I heard a voice behind me say, "Reach for it, mister!" I spun around... and there I was, face to face with a six-year old kid. Well, I just threw my data down and walked away. Little bastard shot me in the ass. So I limped to the nearest saloon, crawled inside a whiskey bottle... and I've been there ever since.

So, I give up. You can have your darn colors. I just refuse to not add a twist that might actually help make them useful. In the spirit of Highlighting the Trend, clicking on a value will grey out the remaining lines.

The One

I don't need to know you. "You" only need to know "me". I will be The One!

Jet Li. China's closest thing to Chuck Norris. Good thing for Jet Li that I'm not Chinese because then I'd be China's closest thing to Chuck Norris. Did you know that Chuck once ran around the world so fast that he hit himself in the back of the head? That's kind of how I felt when it dawned on me how to use the '1' in set analysis when you really just want 'one' of your list boxes to act on an object. The fog parted like butter cutting through a hot knife. Like ghosts sitting around a campfire telling Chuck Norris stories, put on your brave face and follow along...