Description
Even in typical "good" charts it's often easy to miss, or misinterpret, what's going on in the data. Moreover, "best practices" like continuous color scales, equally spaced grid lines, and aggregating data to the week or month leave critical leaps from numbers to meaning up to visual perception or unexamined assumptions.
I'll share 4 specific well-defined "before/after" replacements. For example, by transforming continuous values into meaningful discrete categories we can make several small charts (one for each category) instead of relying on color perception. Moreover, by explicitly defining what values are "high" we create a shared definition; a definition that can be debated.
The alternative charts are both more useful for data analysis, and also make meaning-making explicit. Moreover, domain experts can immediately employ these powerful solutions using standard tools (Excel, etc).
