you don’t always need a graph!

Our current #SWDchallenge has been on my mind. For those who don't know, we pose a different monthly suggestion for community members to build their data visualization and presentation skills. It could be a prompt to try a novel graph type, redesign an existing example, or practice a specific technique like chart animation. This month, data storyteller Simon asked us to consider whether data always needs to be communicated in a graph. Simon shares, "When you have just a number or two, writing the numbers themselves can be much more powerful than burying them in a table or graph and potentially losing the impact of the main number you're looking to share."

This statement came to mind when I reviewed a chart over the weekend. The chart I’m referring to is a bar graph displaying the weekly weight measurements of my dog, Nemo.

Given how sterile this graph appears, you might be surprised to learn that these basic bars elicited a few tears, mostly happy ones. I was so excited about this data that I wanted to share the graph with my friends and family, but I knew the chart wouldn’t have the same impact.

Nemo is a recent addition to our family; we adopted him four months ago. He is a five-year-old mixed breed with a large frame. For reference, he's approximately 25 inches from his shoulders to the base of his tail. By many standards, this classifies him as a large dog. While different breeds vary in weight, you would expect him to weigh at least 50 pounds, based on his frame. As you can see from the bar graph, when Nemo first came home from the shelter, he was 36.2 pounds—severely underweight, with several health issues.

My primary focus over the last few months has been to help him gain weight. I worked closely with his vet to track his weight by bringing him to the office for weekly check-ins. This gave me plenty of data to analyze his progress.

Unfortunately, one of the byproducts of being a data storyteller is that I can’t help but critique charts, whether watching the news or waiting at the vet office. Coming back to the original bar chart, I decided some of the data provided in the pet portal needed a makeover. I removed the border and gridlines. The vertical axis was also deleted, as it was repetitive given the data labels above each bar. Additionally, I made the bars wider so they would be easier to scan across. All of these changes are reflected in the chart below.

This is a simpler graph than the original, but it still doesn’t quite convey the story of Nemo’s recovery. I decided to try a different approach: a line chart.

The line chart has a few advantages over the bar chart. It’s visually lighter with just a single line compared to the nine bars in the original view. This change makes the graph appear more straightforward, even though it contains the same number of data points. Also, there is plenty of extra space around the line, which I filled with annotations. It’s amazing how words can bring data to life!

This got me thinking. If I want to share Nemo’s progress, why do I need a graph? Whether I used bars, lines, annotations, or played with the formatting, the message continued to get lost in the chart. This is a feel-good story about how Nemo, a dog who didn’t have the best start to life, has a second chance. And in a relatively short amount of time, he’s starting to thrive, not just survive.

Taking a cue from Simon’s challenge, I decided to play around with words and images. 

This is a view that I know my friends and family will rejoice at! It's strange to think that a simple statement containing a single number and two pictures can provide more insight than an entire data set of detailed measurements. Graphs are powerful tools for communicating information, but they can sometimes overcomplicate things and deprive the reader of emotionally connecting to the data.

Don’t get me wrong, in many cases, a good graph can do wonders to improve a presentation or report. But it’s important to remember that just because you have data, it doesn’t mean you need a graph. Always think about the message and impact you want to have on your audience; choose a visual that will support that. If you want to explore when words might be better than a graph, there is still time to complete this month's challenge in the community: keep it simple (with text).

On a related note, if you enjoy learning via example, get excited for our new book coming this fall: storytelling with data: before and after. We share twenty powerful makeovers—in our traditional before-and-after format—that illustrate practical lessons like how to find the right level of detail, why you shouldn’t tell stories with dashboards, and the core principles that lead to a well-designed slide. Nemo’s makeover didn’t happen in time for the book, but this simple text transformation is one I’m quite proud of!