We've all created a graph before and thought: Does this work? My advice when this situation arises is to seek feedback. Jon Schwabish has brought this critical feedback loop online, with his recently launched site, HelpMeViz, which was designed to "facilitate discussion, debate, and collaboration from the data visualization community." Check out this post for more info on this resource.

Word clouds created a bit of buzz when they first became popular. However, I often find that upon further evaluation they tend to be a letdown—full of fluff without so much informative value. Check out this post for my discussion on why and a word cloud makeover.

If you're using Excel to try to tell a story with data, plotting the data in this application should be the first step in your data visualization process, not your last. It takes time, iterations, and sometimes some brute force to get from the graphing application's defaults to a visual that you're proud to present.

One common piece of feedback I get after presenting on the topic of data visualization goes something like this:  Wow, that was super useful. I'm never going to use pie charts again. But when it comes to the graphs, how do you actually make them look like that? I'm not Excel-savvy...help! Let me take a few minutes to walk step-by-step through an example to expose those who question their Excel expertise to some of my tricks.

I recently tested out the Circos tool for visualizing matrix data. In this post, I discuss my trial and some general considerations (both pros and cons) when it comes to using "sexy" or novel data visualizations.