The reading we did for this assignment detailed how to determine if a graph or a table is the correct way to portray a set of data. It started off by showing a somewhat visually appealing radar chart, but after close inspection, it really was difficult to tell what the radar chart was trying to tell us. There weren’t any values associated with the chart, and it wasn’t exactly clear how each category was related to one another. I also wasn’t sure if we were supposed to think that the area of the resulting object for each person was supposed to be the determining factor for hiring the person, and if it was, then we really couldn’t tell that well which one was bigger because they were overlapping in different ways.
Thankfully, the article went on to explain that the radar chart was not a good way to portray the information, and instead a simple table probably would have been best so that the big boss could see the individual data points quantitatively. I think a bar chart of each category could have worked as well, and the radar chart could be useful only if it was used as a brief summary. It would then have to be followed by the table and probably several bar charts as well.
The reading then explained when to use different types of graphs and tables, and what kind of scales are useful with each. There are ordinal, nominal, and interval scales that all have different places in different graphs. Interval scales deal with quantitative data, so we are most used to seeing them. But nominal and ordinal scales are also used frequently. This kind of data is only categorical, and in the case of ordinal data, the categories make more sense when they are ordered in a specific manner. Ordinal and nominal data are useful to see in bar charts, because we can compare the length of each bar’s category with other categories to see how they relate to each other, and then be able to make a decision.