Your Guide to Table Design From a Data Viz Practitioner

When charts aren’t enough, there are still plenty of guidelines for conveying information clearly and attractively

Your presentation is ready. You know the problem case inside and out.

You picked out a really nice chart, and you put a lot of work into layering information in intuitive and clear ways, with very little clutter and clear contrast between data types.

You are, indeed, the greatest analyst ever.

But you take a step back at your product—your slide, report, webpage, or dashboard—and cold truth rushes over you. Your numbers … they … they’re ... complicated.

The average person will latch on to the key premise of your product, but there are people out there. People who care about the numbers. And if they can’t make the same ones you did, they’ll reject your work. Something must be done.

Whether they deserve it or not, you begin seeing these foes in a negative light. As uneducated. As chaff.

This effervescent mass, this ceaseless horde of mongers will shun your product for not giving up your data despite your low perception of their skills. Python isn’t a computer language to these people, it’s a snake. Excel is a type…