In 1984, Cleveland and McGill firstly integrated the graphing science and human graphical perception theories to conduct experiment on best visualization practices for data analytics.
Based on graphical perception theory, the authors argues that the first step for understanding quantitative graphs is to identify a number of elementary perceptual tasks and conducted relevant experiment, which is valid. Further, the experiment results also suggests that graphs, including bar charts, divided bar charts, pie charts, and statistical maps, should prioritize elementary tasks as much as possible.
In 2010, Jeffrey Heer and Michael Bostock from Stanford University complimented the experimental methodology, which is crowdsourcing graphical test. It is an low cost and scalable way to validate the large design space for visualization. The authors use Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to test the effectiveness of graphical perception experiment, as well as new exercise on rectangular area perception and on chart size and girdling space. The results show that crowdsourcing is an effective method.
In 2016, Drew Skau and Robert Kosara investigated the reading accuracy of visualization through pie and donut charts. They found out that the quantitative information is embedded in these charts through arc length, center angle and segment area. Also, the donut charts are as accurate as traditional pie charts.
In 2017, Kokina, Pachamanova and Corbett further analyzed the role of data visualization in performance management for small ventures’ business problmems and growth strategies. The paper shows that the accountants in smaller firms need to devlelop skills in predictive analytics with Excel and Tableau.
Julia Kokina, Dessislava Pachamanova, Andrew Corbett, The role of data visualization and analytics in performance management: Guiding entrepreneurial growth decisions, Journal of Accounting Education, Volume 38, 2017, Pages 50-62, ISSN 0748-5751.
Heer, Bostock - 2010 - Crowdsourcing Graphical Perception Using Mechanical Turk to Assess Visualization Design
Cleveland, McGill - 1984 - Graphical Perception Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical MethodsFile
Skau, Kosara - 2016 - Arcs, Angles, or Areas Individual Data Encodings in Pie and Donut Charts