Thumbnail: Question Before Chart
Thumbnail: Question Before Chart
One of the biggest mistakes beginners make... is asking, "Which chart should I use? " That's the wrong question. The right question is... "What am I trying to understand? " Every chart exists because someone wanted to answer a specific type of question. Are you comparing products? Looking for change over time? Understanding what makes up a whole? Exploring how values are distributed? Or discovering whether two variables are related? Those are very different questions. Which means... they require different visual languages. Once you know the question... choosing the chart becomes much easier. Throughout this course... we won't organize charts by their names. We'll organize them by the questions they answer. Because professionals don't memorize charts. They recognize questions. And once you recognize the question... the right chart usually becomes obvious.
