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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 November 2010
For those of you stuck in spreadsheet hell then this is book you should really like. The many and varied way that data is displayed in this book is a treat - and informative to boot
My working environment is characterised by massive spreadsheets where the prize seems to be to hide the information you need in a morass of data that you don't - what this book does is show that just because you have a lot of data in order to make sense of it you don't have to display all of it (never mind the quality feel the width approach) For example on Page 218 there is a display of whole has the worlds's oil - and who will have it in 2020 - now, instead of a big table you get a bubble diagram showing the relative sizes - and the point just leaps off the page that the Middle East will have a GREATER share of the world's oil in 2020 that it does today - now thats information and NOT data - one for the policy makers to mull over ?
And the book is full of them
Then try the one on Page 158/9 on Carbon production - again a table, even or ordered one does not give you the full difference - but put a picture on it and you see that the airline industry produces a huge amount
This book shows you many ways to present data - not all of them work for me - but oh it makes it more interesting that yet another line or bar graph - now if we could just use this in the civil service ..
My working environment is characterised by massive spreadsheets where the prize seems to be to hide the information you need in a morass of data that you don't - what this book does is show that just because you have a lot of data in order to make sense of it you don't have to display all of it (never mind the quality feel the width approach) For example on Page 218 there is a display of whole has the worlds's oil - and who will have it in 2020 - now, instead of a big table you get a bubble diagram showing the relative sizes - and the point just leaps off the page that the Middle East will have a GREATER share of the world's oil in 2020 that it does today - now thats information and NOT data - one for the policy makers to mull over ?
And the book is full of them
Then try the one on Page 158/9 on Carbon production - again a table, even or ordered one does not give you the full difference - but put a picture on it and you see that the airline industry produces a huge amount
This book shows you many ways to present data - not all of them work for me - but oh it makes it more interesting that yet another line or bar graph - now if we could just use this in the civil service ..
