Data displays in an academic setting are as variable as they are useful. The forms through which an author can display data may take many different shapes and sizes. Authors and designers can tailor these displays to fit a certain audience or to display and emphasize key parts of a study. There are a multitude of ways designers can alter their displays to convey information. Designers also have a responsibility to display information clearly and concisely without being misleading. Yet data displays can greatly improve readers’ understanding of material presented in a study or work.

Designers of data displays, in order to have an effective data representation, must first consider the three aspects of audience, purpose, and context. In order to convey information effectively, displays must take into account the people who will be seeing them, along with the context in which the displays will appear. Of course, designers must also ensure that the chosen display best represents the purpose of the work or study of which it is a part. Taking a variety of forms, displays can include bar graphs, pie charts, and line graphs, and many others. Thus designers have the task of choosing among these options to best represent the data that is in focus. To direct them in designing a display, designers have six guidelines to follow.

Arrangement, emphasis, clarity, conciseness, tone and ethos are the six criteria that designers should use to direct their displays. Arrangement and emphasis are closely related – arrangement of data into a certain form can increase or decrease the emphasis of a particular finding or conclusion. Designers may choose to shift the scale of data on a graph, or may choose to show a horizontal graph rather than a vertical one for the sake of emphasis. While arrangement involves the data points themselves, clarity involves the aspects of a display that clarify the points of data that are represented. Aspects of a graph such as labels, legends, tick marks, line thickness, use of titles, and even color can alter a graph’s clarity to readers. Yet too many of these defining elements can decrease a graph’s conciseness. More elements means a higher chance of having a scattered or unclear graph. Thus conciseness involves having just enough elements on a graph to make a point, but not more. The tone of a graph results from many of these elements coming together and creating a graph that appears technical and professional while not seeming overly rigid and academic. Tone can incorporate such elements as typeface and use of color scales as well. The last, and one of the most significant, aspects of data displays is ethos.

The formula for Edward Tufte’s Lie Factor

Ethos concerns a graph’s credibility towards readers, and can have important implications for the graph’s effectiveness. Designers must ensure that their graphs are in no way misleading or misrepresentative of their data. Shifting a graph’s scale or altering the viewer’s perspective on it may lead viewers to form misguided conclusions about the data being represented. Yale professor Edward Tufte writes on the implications of misleading data displays in his book The Lie Factor. The Lie Factor, Tufte describes, is roughly the difference between how a graph is portrayed on paper and what the quantities actually represent. The formula Tufte presents measures the representations of the numbers on the graph against the actual quantities on which the graph is based. Graphs that show representations that are closely matched to actual data are honest. It is the responsibility of designers to ensure that representations are as close as possible to actual quantities. Keeping ethos, along with the other factors, as a guideline for their work will ensure that designers are effectively representing data.