Scott Maxwell sums up 10 ways to lie with metrics. This is great advice for the political strivers and schemey backstabbers and a great antipattern for the readership of this blog. To summarize, here are his ten ways to lie when presenting data:

1. Only present metrics that are positive. That's why you collect all those metrics.
2. Only present metrics that are easy to manage.
3. Use many metrics.
4. Be extremely precise with your numbers.
5. Present quickly, drown 'em with data.
6. Say "you don't break down metrics" if they aren't flattering to you.
7. Put lipstick on that pig—apply lots of gloss to your charts. Hello, Crystal XCelsius!
8. Show off your bona fides by sharing some metrics "off the cuff".
9. Prep your team by feeding them lines.
10. Your job isn't to educate your audience about your metrics. If people don't know what you're talking about, it's because they're stupid.

This is a great list, and it's hard to avoid committing some of this sins from time-to-time. I think the best tool to improve your honesty when presenting numbers is to respect the intelligence and good judgment of your audience.

This isn't easy; we all have people who can drive us crazy, who can derail a presentation with niggling questions or who ask for information they'll never use.

There is no magic bullet when presenting numbers. Your job is not merely to show a few columns of numbers, but to teach your colleagues what those numbers mean.

[Editors note: Read the comments! David has some timely additions to this list.] 

There has been lot of buzz in the data junkie field about Swivel (a web site being described as "YouTube for Data") and Many Eyes (a similar but more academic offering from the IBM's Visual Communication Lab).

Swivel hit the news a couple months back with a slavering piece by Michael Arrington, whose blog TechCrunch is the chronicle of Web 2.0. Arrington wrote:

Academic types are going to go nuts over this. I spent a summer in college running regression analysis models on economic data. Being able to simply upload data to Swivel and then begin to slice and dice the data would have saved a lot of time. ...And being able to compare our data to what others were doing in related fields could have yielded results that we would never have aimed for. Big companies, small companies, thinktanks and non-classified government organizations are going to be similarly dazzled.

That seemed to us a bit out of touch with the needs of real data users—I can't imagine Economics professors thanking their lucky stars for an unverified, single dimension data set.

We received a number of e-mails asking us what we thought. Fortunately, Robert Kosara at Eager Eyes has done the thinking for us with a very comprehensive review of these two sites. Robert's summary:

Swivel needs to tone down the hype and grow up. They are not YouTube, and data visualization isn't nearly as sexy and mass marketable as video sharing. They can only live on the Digg crowd for so long, at some point they will need to appeal to more sophisticated customers that are actually willing to spend money. Those will see through their marketing buzz and will demand more capabilities. Playing with data is great, but it will only take them so far...

...One of [Many Eyes'] challenges will be to provide cutting-edge visualization tools in a way that people can actually use. Easier editing and better interoperability between their already large number of visualizations should make the service much more attractive. They should also present an idea where they are trying to go with this, if the site will exist for a longer time, or just disappear once IBM stops believing that anything can come of it.

Tasty Research's intern war stories have been doing the rounds at the usual suspect aggregation sites in the past few days. And jolly fine reading they are, too. I'm not sure how I'd handle the insane power of giving away free Xboxen to my pimply-faced peers at the tender age of 17, but it seems like the author has made it through with a modicum of humility still in place.

In my day, it would have been a Commodore 64 or a Spectrum. Which may have been a tad easier to hand out. We were grateful for access to any hardware, as personal computers were a bit thin on the ground. We were young, eager, and didn't give a hoot if low resolution game characters appeared blocky. Who cared if Manic Miner looked like he was painted with the end of a brick?

At this point old codgers usually gaze off into the distance, dab a misty eye, and say something along the lines of "those were the days". Are they nuts? I like it here in the future: tons of RAM, quad processors, snazzy mobile phones, digital cameras, and access to a Series of Tubes. This is much better, thank you.

The people who work at Juice share a similar tech view. And after seeing Tasty's MicroGooHoo perk comparison chart that got me thinking about what we dish out in the way of employee treats. I think we do pretty well for an outfit of our size and market cap (of zero dollars).

I added a couple of columns to the matrix explaining the World of Juice:

0. No onsite chefs, but if you're hungry, we'll feed you from any of the many restaurants near the office.
1. You're never far from natural light. Darkness is fine for mushrooms, but not for people.
2. Count the number of matches at exhibit one, two, and three. I rest my case.
3. This assumes you're sitting at a desk. Wouldn't you rather have a laptop and sit where you want?
4. We're not big enough!
5. See the last point.
6. We're run by humans, too. Everybody fears something.
7. Ah, we'd have to kill you if we told you. Soon, though.

In all seriousness, this is a bit of fun. We count the number of adjoining offices we have rather than buildings (or even floors). But, keeping with the serious theme, we really do pretty well. I've worked with very smart people at all three companies on the chart and I do know we have just as much brain power per capita.

Why not come and join us?

Dear PPT,

I have a feeling you knew this time would come. And I have to say that it's not you, it's all me.

You and I have been through hundreds of presentations together and our relationship has been pretty good. Up until now. You never demanded exclusivity and I didn't imagine I'd need to go anywhere else for my presentation needs.

Sadly, it has come to this: I need to see other applications.

I've started to look around and I'm finding that there are many different ways that I can share information without your homeliness (mostly in the sagging visual and functional constraints areas). I know that sounds unfair—I have my own constraints. Face it, PPT, the world has changed and you're just not the stunner you used to be.

Why, just the other day I had to share a lot of data with a client and wanted to flip through different scenarios. I admit that I have been spending a lot of time with your sister application Excel. But it's not what you're thinking. Once I took out the gridlines, labeled the tabs, jacked-up the typeface, and went to full-screen, I was practically in the world of slide-ware. And Excel offers built-in tables, calculations, nice visual alignment, more flexible charting, easy interactivity, and many of your drawing features. Excel's been around the block but still managed to keep up with the times.

You might argue that we are talking about a non-traditional presentation format. But here's the really bad news: I've found myself dazzled by Keynote. That's probably the last thing you want to hear, I know. Unspoken, I knew I should have kept away, but once I had the Mac, that little temptress consumed my thoughts.

Oh, the shocking out-of-the-box design appeal is just too much for a presenter not to fiddle with. Check out a few of your default templates:

Now take a look at what Keynote will do for me:

Oh, PPT, why did you let yourself go like this? I know, it shouldn't be all about sizzle. And to be fair, I'm not so sure that Keynote provides the range of functionality that I've been accustomed to with you, PPT. But it sure does push me toward better looking presentations. You know how visual we MBAs are.

I thought back to the times I used you to merely to compile and organize information. You know I dumped your other sister Word for this task (I hope Thanksgiving wasn't too awkward for you that year). But then I ran into OmniOutliner. What a great tool for capturing information, organizing my thoughts, and structuring a story. Here's a look at how it can integrate different file types into one information document:

PPT, you know I used to try and juice up my presentation while I was thinking through my message. But now I know that it is far better to separate data from presentation—two distinct steps. You may have noticed that when we spend less time together, I'm off writing in a plain text editor. Massaging my thoughts before I use your presentation capabilities.

We need to redefine our relationship. I still love you for your strengths but I need more than this. I have to go elsewhere for those things that you don't do as well.

Don't hold this against me. Particularly in the middle of an important presentation.

Regretfully yours,

Zach

P.S. See you Wednesday if it isn't raining.

Here's a little Excel charting hack (with a screencast) that will baffle your colleagues, confound your enemies, and provide useful information display. Sometimes you want to graph related series on two axes without confusion about which axis belongs to which series. Something like this:

For details on how this is done, watch the screencast.

The approach comes down to two techniques:

1. Extend the ranges of the primary and secondary axes to compress the secondary axis values to the bottom of the chart and the primary axis to the top of the chart.
2. Use conditional custom number formats to hide values on the axes. For instance a number format like: [>1]"";0% displays a blank string ("") if the number is greater than 1 and uses the "0%" format otherwise.

Have I mentioned there's a screencast? Have fun.