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Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis
| Title | Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis |
| Writer | |
| Date | 2025-07-10 18:30:50 |
| Type | |
| Link | Listen Read |
Desciption
This companion to Show Me the Numbers teaches the fundamental principles and practices of quantitative data analysis. Employing a methodology that is primarily learning by example and “thinking with our eyes,” this manual features graphs and practical analytical techniques that can be applied to a broad range of data analysis tools—including the most commonly used Microsoft Excel. This approach is particularly valuable to those who need to make sense of quantitative business data by discerning meaningful patterns, trends, relationships, and exceptions that reveal business performance, potential problems and opportunities, and hints about the future. It provides practical skills that are useful to managers at all levels and to those interested in keeping a keen eye on their business.
Review
The reviews that complain over the lack of new or ground-breaking content are missing the point, I think; this is meant as an entry-level look at best practices in data visualization, not a technical (ish) manual like Colin Ware's book or a political statement like Tufte's ouevre. Indeed, it assumes no technical or statistical background and is on the whole extremely courteous to the reader's time and interests. Few's books are perfect for office drones who need to produce charts and data visualization on a regular basis but do not have the formal training necessary to make these as meaningful as they should be. This category would include me, I suppose.Yes, the reader could glean some of the insights in here through reading Tufte's books, but he/she would also have to suffer through a bog of screeds and gassy digressions to get to them (see my review of Beautiful Evidence for my somewhat unfavourable opinion on Tufte's later work). I have now read all of Stephen Few's books. Like Show Me the Numbers, I found Now You See It jam-packed with useful insights. However, not all of them were new. There is some overlap in the content between these two books and for this reason I would not consider it essential to get both. But I do consider it essential to get one. Recommended.
