While no business presentation is complete without its plethora of charts and graphics, very few people understand how truly meaningless numbers are unless their significance is clearly understood and they are effectively communicated to the people who rely on them for decision making.

"Poor data presentation is easily the rule much more than the exception, and there are so few good examples of data presentation that most people aren't even aware that there is a problem," Few says.

Yet with a little thought and effort these problems can be corrected easily. In fact Few says it is no more difficult and takes no longer to produce effective tables and graphs than to produce ineffective ones. The trick is to accept that, as providers of quantitative business information, managers have a responsibility to do more than sift through the data and pass it on; instead, they must help their audience gain the insight contained therein.

"We must design the message in a way that leads readers on a journey of discovery, making sure that what's important is clearly seen and understood. The right numbers have an important story to tell. They [readers] rely on you to give them a clear and convincing voice," Few says.

Quantitative Quality?

Karen A Schriver, an internationally recognized expert in document design, has famously said: "Poor documents are so commonplace that deciphering bad writing and bad visual design have become part of the coping skills needed to navigate in the so-called information age."

Before the advent of the PC and spreadsheet software, people generally produced tables of quantitative information using a pencil, a sheet of lined paper, a calculator and hours of tedious labour. Graphs could only be produced using a pencil (perhaps several of different colours), a straight-edged device (for example, a ruler or draftsman's triangle), a sheet of graph paper and, you guessed it, hours of labour.

"When chart-producing software hit the scene, many of us who would have never before taken the time to draw a graph suddenly became Rembrandts of the X and Y axes - or so we thought," Few says. "Like kids in a toy store, we went crazy over all the available colours and cool effects, thrilled with the new means for techno-artistic expression. Through the magic of computers, tables and graphs became easy - perhaps too easy."

Today, everyone can produce reports of quantitative business information in the form of tables and graphs, which acquire an air of authenticity and quality they do not always deserve, simply because they were produced by a computer. Worse, in our excitement to produce what we could only make before with great effort, many of us - and that includes almost every major vendor in Few's book - have lost sight of the real purpose of quantitative displays: to provide the reader with important, meaningful and useful insight.

"The reason for this sad state of affairs is simple - very few of us have ever been trained to design tables and graphs effectively. Some of us have struggled to do this work well but simply haven't found useful resources to assist us. Others of us haven't struggled at all, simply because we haven't seen enough examples of good design to recognize the inadequacy of our own efforts."

Business schools do not teach this, says Few, who is one of just two authorities (the other being data visualization expert Howard Spielman) in the business intelligence area that focuses specifically on data visualization. "I teach a course at UC Berkeley in the MBA program and as far as I know I may teach the only MBA-level course in how to communicate graphically."

Because visual presentation is not the core of their product, most vendors do not even have the need for more effective tables and graphs on their radar screen. When they consider their next release a vendor that already provides numerous poorly designed charts and tables is likely to wonder what other new kinds of graphical presentations they can throw into the product, without ever once considering how to make their software more effective.

"To communicate quantitative information effectively first requires an understanding of the numbers, then the ability to display their message for accurate and efficient interpretation by the reader," Few says.

"Quantitative information - the numbers - takes us out of the realm of assumption, feeling, guesswork, gut instinct, intuition and bias, into the realm of reliable fact based on measurable evidence. Too many business decisions are based on perceptions that are fallible. You may wake up in the morning, step outside, feel the sunshine on your skin, and know deep down in your bones that it's warmer today than it was yesterday, only to glance at the thermometer and discover that it is in fact five degrees cooler . . . Your gut may tell you that business is now better than ever, but a careful check of the numbers reveals that your market share has actually decreased during the course of the past 12 months," Few writes.