How Much and How Many - Communicating Data with Tableau - page 41

Figure 3-6. The Sort dialog box
This dialog box is informing you that the chart is currently sorting Borough in descending
order based on the sum of the RefuseTonsCollected field. Go ahead and try some different
options and see how the chart changes. You can even create your own manual sort by using
the section at the bottom. After playing around with some different sorts, use the Undo but-
ton to return to the sort shown in Figure 3-5 .
We've seen a number of different ways to show the refuse collection amounts by borough,
but is there an even more effective way to communicate this data? In the next section, we'll
explore a chart type called the dot chart , the use of which is advocated by Naomi Robbins. [ 1 ]
The Dot Chart
Going back to Figure 1-6 yet again, we see that the most effective way of encoding quantitat-
ive information is to use position. Which of the chart types in Figure 3-4 utilizes position to
encode the amount of refuse collected? Only the circle view (chart 9). And yet its effective-
ness is limited by the fact that all of the circles are in the same column, meaning the green
circle for Manhattan and the blue circle for the Bronx are overlapping, and making it virtu-
ally impossible to tell them apart.