Data Visualization with Microsoft Reporting Services

MAKING BUSINESS INTELLIGENT
www.pragmaticworks.com
Visualizing Data
with Microsoft Reporting Services
Chris Price
Senior BI Consultant
@BluewaterSQL

Intro
Chris Price
Senior BI Consultant with Pragmatic Works
Author, Regular Speaker, Data Geek & Super Dad!
@BluewaterSQL
http://bluewatersql.wordpress.com/
cprice@pragmaticworks.com

Outline
 Data Visualization: Art & Science
 Reporting Services

Data Visualization
A part of the Information Design space:
 Make complex information easier to
understand and use
 Part art, part science to prepare information
so our brains can efficiently & effectively
process it

Data Visualization
9046385743
(904) 638-5743

Example: Before
What does this data/information say to you?

Example: After
Flat Trend
Trending Up
Quarterly Cyclical Pattern
Exception

Data Visualization
 Why data visualization?
 Human beings are pattern seekers
 Visual Perception
 Cognition
 70% of all sense receptors are in your eyes
 Your eye and brain are a powerful high-
bandwidth, massive parallel processor

Whose Who
Edward Tufte
Statistician & Professor @ Yale University
Pioneer in Information Design & Data Visualization
Hates PowerPoint 
Stephen Few
Leading innovator & practitioner in data visualization
Set forth many of the dashboard design standards used
today
Hates Bling 

Principals of Visual Context
 Proximity – things that are close
 Similarity – things that look alike
 Enclosure – things enclosed by a shape
 Closure – incomplete shapes are completed
 Continuity – things that are aligned
 Connection – things that are connected
Source: Gestalt’s Psychological Principals of Perception

Principals of Visual Design
 Know your audience
 Executives vs. Operational Managers
 Select the Right Medium
 Avoid variety for the sake of variety
 Pie charts are evil
 Bar Charts vs. Line Charts
 Kill Cute
 Identify non-data pixels (backgrounds, borders,
gradients, gridlines, 3-d effects)
 demphasis when its not possible to remove them

Principals of Visual Design
 Use Colors Carefully
 Bright colors cause fatigue
 Remember the color blind
 https://kuler.adobe.com/
 Size & Color are perceived quantitatively but
imprecisely.
 Use 2-D placement instead.
 Visual Consistency
 Left-to-Right
 Placement/Layout (Relevance Grid)

Chart Junk

Visual/Actual Differences

Data Encoding
Precise:
 Sales/Mkting Expenses
 X/Y Plot
Imprecise:
• Profit
• Size of bubble

Line vs. Bar Charts

Line vs. Bar Charts
 First…Know your scale:
 Nominal (Discrete items, no order)
 Sales, Operations, HR, Marketing, Accounting
 Ordinal (Items with an intrinsic order)
 Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4
 Interval (Items with an intrinsic order &
quantitative value
 Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sept, Oct, Nov,
Dec

Line vs. Bar Charts
 Bar Charts:
 Ideal for comparing values since individual values
are emphasized
 Nominal & Ordinal
 Line Charts:
 Implies connection between data points
 Ideal for showing trends
 Interval
 You can use bar charts for interval when comparing
values

Pie vs. Bar Charts

Reporting Services
 A pervasive, flexible enterprise platform for
reporting that is capable of powerful data
visualizations
 Robust developer community
 Easy to set-up and use
 Many built-in charting options

Reporting Services Charts
 Common
 Lines/Bars/Area (Pie)/Scatter/Etc.
 Gauges
 Bullet Graph
 Indicators
 Sparklines/Data Bars
 Maps

Bullet Graph

Demo

Resources & References
Books:
Blogs:
http://www.perceptualedge.com/

Upcoming Sessions
7/18 – PASS Business Analyst Virtual Chapter
Introduction to Mahout for HDInsight
7/23 – PASS Big Data Virtual Chapter
The BI Guys Little Guide to Big Data
7/27 – Cocoa Beach #231
MDS in Practice: An Integrated Approach
8/16 to 8/18/2013 – Code on the Beach (Jacksonville)
Running with Elephants: Predictive Analytics with HDInsight
9/14 – Orlando #232
Into the Wild, Taming Unstructured Data

www.pragmaticworks.comMAKING BUSINESS INTELLIGENT
Thank you!
@BluewaterSQL
http://bluewatersql.wordpress.com/
cprice@pragmaticworks.com

Data Visualization with Microsoft Reporting Services

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