4 Tips for Reading Any Charts and Dashboards

1. What does this chart represent?

• Does the chart or dashboard have a clear title and purpose?
• Can you understand the chart's intent in a few moments?

2. Does this chart show any particular patterns or trends?

• Can you see trends in seasonality (example: every November sales rise)?
• Does your data have any?outliers-data points that stand out as very different from the rest of the data-that should be reviewed or explored more closely?

3. Is this all of the data?

• Does it look like the author deliberately excluded or hid relevant data?
• Can you answer all of your questions with what you see, or do you need more data?

4. Is it clear what has been measured and what the numbers represent?

• Has the author included helpful notes, labels, and navigational hints?
• Can you gather valuable and actionable data from this chart?