Charts and Graphs · Chapter 23

Honest Chart Maker

Every rule for an honest chart is a trick from the book turned around. This tool starts you on the honest side.

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Opens on Chapter 23’s example: Marisol’s Q3 sales by product line, in thousands of dollars.

Enter your numbers, then press Calculate.

How it works

Bars start at zero, because their length is the number; if you start them higher, the tool says by how much that exaggerates. It sorts largest first unless the order means something, labels each bar directly, and paints at most one item in the accent color. A survey of n people has a margin of about 1 ÷ √n. The alt-text sentence lists every label and value, for screen readers and for anyone the image fails to load for.

From the book, Chapter 23. Drawn from 50 instead of zero, chairs would look 9.8 times planters, though they’re 4.7 times as big. Against last year planters grew 40.3%, chairs 8.4% and tables changed −5%. A survey of 400 has a margin of about ±5%. Every chapter and its calculator →

Rounding is half up, the way the book rounds. Numbers can be typed as 1,450, $38, 12% or 2.5 million. Everything stays in your browser: no sign-up, nothing stored or sent.