One dataset drawn as a few interactive charts, each with a sentence that says what to see.
A chart answers a question, and the wrong chart answers one nobody asked. The sample draws a single made-up dataset, a year of pothole reports in a small city, as four charts, each in the form that suits its question. Open it, point at the marks, and flip the toggle on the second chart to watch the ranking change.
Who it's for
Analysts, researchers and anyone with a spreadsheet and readers who won't open it: a council committee, a board, a class. You've done the analysis and want people to see what you saw.
It suits a dataset small enough to paste into a conversation, and a period that's over, such as last year's reports. The numbers are written into the page and stay as pasted. Readers who want to cut the data their own way need the spreadsheet too.
What a good one contains
- One question per chart. The example asks when, where, how long and from whom, and each answer gets its own form.
- A headline that states the finding. "Road crews find one pothole in eight" tells readers what to look for before they look.
- Numbers on the marks. March's 412 is written beside its point and each district's bar ends in its figure, so nobody has to read across to an axis.
- Exact values on hover, tap or Tab. Point at the 5–6 day bar and it says 468 repairs, 55% fixed by day 6. A reader who doubts a headline can check it.
- A toggle that changes the measure. By count, Southfield leads. Per 10 miles of road, Old Town does. Both are true, and letting readers switch shows you didn't just pick the flattering one.
- One accent color. Black carries the data and red points at the single thing to notice.
- Where the data came from, and what's missing. The example names the log, says repeat reports count once, and admits that 64 reports still open aren't in the histogram.
Start from the sentence
Write the sentence you want a reader to repeat, then choose the form. "Over time" wants a line. "More than" wants bars sorted by length. "Typical" wants a histogram, because an average hides the slow cases: half the repairs took 6 days or fewer, and 58 took three weeks or longer. "Share of" wants one bar cut into parts. Save the pie for two or three slices.
Then check every headline against the data by hand. "Nearly a third" has to be 768 of 2,416. If you can't say what a chart shows in one sentence, it isn't finished, or the page doesn't need it.
How to send it
As an open link. These are public figures for a public meeting, and residents should be able to pass them on. If your charts show customers or money, choose a password.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
