“Die Welt” recently made a first attempt to use sparklines. Shrunken graphics with dubious references and problematic scales, however, were the result. Too bad! The good news, however, is that the [...]

This is a digital plea for analog media. We don’t just need paper on Fridays. And paper has a long future ahead – and for much more than just wrapping fish.

"Radical" is a word that has many different connotations – many of which are not exactly gentle. Today, we’ll use it again to describe the next necessary steps for management information. And we can [...]

Monitors are not made of paper. But since real time and interactivity only exist in digital form, paper is much less tolerant than you might think. Our wish is to combine the advantages of both media [...]

No one likes to get lost in a strange place. That’s why we pay extra attention to where we are headed. In fact, I learned a lot from traffic signs on a recent trip abroad.

Today’s topic is a practical self-help lesson. It is safer to fly than to visualize the safety of flying. Colors have a lot to do with that. What can we learn from this? We don’t have to color everything [...]

Whether it’s Barbie and Ken, Madame Tussaud, Playmobil or even the ‘Männleinlaufen’ in Nuremburg – people as figurines are either fun or educational. But as we can see from the following examples [...]

Handelsblatt and the Wall Street Journal Europe, which are affiliated through a mutual cooperation, have recently relaunched their publications. Unfortunately, both instances are not exactly good news [...]

Proofreading is just as important in charts as it is in texts – and there are plenty of examples to prove that. When it comes to presenting data, however, we also need to remember that the real value [...]

Today, we’ll prove how useful data analysis truly is by answering a very current question: Should we even leave the house on this Friday the 13th, for example, to go analyze data?

Hearing is one of our most powerful senses. We can close our eyes but not our ears. If we want to take data analysis to the next level, we must also use our sense of hearing. Anything else would be rather [...]

Minard’s famous graphic of Napoleon’s Russian campaign tells the striking story of disaster. Like all graphics, however, it can only capture a fraction of the overall events. What can we do to combat [...]

Not every summit is a reason for optimism. And that’s exactly the problem when people are careless with line charts, which is generally the case. Here is an exception.

Controllers are a lot like politicians. They don’t just want to spot and examine issues, they also want to take action and change things. To do that, they need more than convincing numbers – they [...]

Design aid: We can use analog displays to synchronize some very sophisticated actions. And we can learn them more easily than robots can. But can gauges point managers in the right direction?

We cannot statistically prove anything because the statistics themselves lack the power to do so. Yet people still continue to believe they can – mostly because they don’t know what significance means [...]

Statistical significance has an outstanding reputation. But does it deserve it? How significant is your knowledge of significance? Take this test to find out!

When it comes to numbers, how do we find the right words? Should they "collapse", "slide" or "explode"? I personally say – no. The ideal number of judgmental adjectives, superlatives and polemic descriptions [...]

When it comes to the amount of data in reports, all I can say is: the more, the merrier. If a report becomes hard to read, the design is the problem – not the numbers themselves. Numerous daily newspapers [...]

I want quality measures for information. And today, we’ll take a closer look at one of them. A mere observation shows that many graphical elements are grossly exaggerated. That’s why we’ll show [...]

Natural scientists arm themselves with a microscope or telescope. And what about business economists? Let’s take a closer look at the importance of resolution and how to measure the quality of reports [...]

Controlling guerillas aren’t being turned away at palace gates anymore. Discover why that is as well as other lessons learned at our Executive Forum last Monday in Berlin.

There is an exception to every rule. Even circles, which we usually blame, are sometimes worthy of acclaim – especially in combination with graphical tables.

Hans Rosling wanted to show the best statistics ever seen at a TED conference. In my opinion, it was only one of the best presentations of statistics. Here are the pros and cons for using animation in [...]

Analyzing means comparing. That is the central rule here. Placing objects next to each other, however, rarely suffices as a comparison. In order to see what there is to see, you usually you have to do [...]

Controllers are bean counters – and that is a good thing! After all, good entrepreneurs are as well. And too many captains on one ship spoil the course.

The expectations for data mining were very high. Its new methods were supposed to automatically uncover the buried information treasures in databases. Now, the German magazine ‘Wirtschaftsinformatik’ [...]