Use a diverging bar chart to compare two data series that are related
Author: Dave Paradi
Dave Paradi has over twenty-two years of experience delivering customized training workshops to help business professionals improve their presentations. He has written ten books and over 600 articles on the topic of effective presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. His focus is on helping corporate professionals visually communicate the messages in their data so they don't overwhelm and confuse executives. Dave is one of fewer than ten people in North America recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional Award for his contributions to the Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube.
2017 Annoying PowerPoint survey results; Issue #399 October 3, 2017
In this newsletter I summarized a few of the results from the 2017 Annoying PowerPoint survey. You can read the full report here.
One-day workshop for Manufacturing Company (October 3, 2018, Sterling Heights, MI)
Customized one-day workshop for researchers and management covering planning a presentation, focusing the message, and creating effective visuals. The session includes slide makeovers of their own slides to reinforce the ideas.
One-day workshop for Medical Company (September 25, 2018, Worcester, MA)
Customized one-day workshop for researchers and management covering planning a presentation, focusing the message, and creating effective visuals. The session includes slide makeovers of their own slides to reinforce the ideas. The last part of the day is hands-on practice creating the effective visuals they saw earlier in the day.
3 Alternatives to axis breaks; Issue #398 September 19, 2017
Twice in the past few months I have seen column charts with axis breaks. Some software makes it easy to create these types of charts. In this article I want to recommend against using this type of chart and offer some alternatives. To start with, what is an axis break chart and why would it…
Inserting a MATLAB SVG image into any version of PowerPoint by converting it to a vector EMF image
Recent changes to PowerPoint have made it more difficult to insert MATLAB vector images because the EPS format is no longer supported in PowerPoint (without a registry hack requiring administrator access). This video shows how you can use the online cloudconvert.com service to convert an SVG image from MATLAB into an EMF vector image that…
Total on stacked columns/bars; Issue #397 September 5, 2017
Recently I wrote about how I think presenters should replace stacked column or bar graphs with better visuals (see the entire article here). In my customized workshops I have participants who need to create a stacked graph because the boss wants it or the audience expects to see the data presented that way. Often they…
Focus by using an All Others category; Issue #396 August 22, 2017
Use an All Others category when showing ranked data to focus on the most important categories
The Globe and Mail August 18, 2017
Suggestions from Dave’s article on how to use an executive summary in a presentation were included in Harvey Schachter’s online Power Points column on August 18, 2017.
How to Present a Cash Flow Statement
Accountants and other financial professionals often have to present a cash flow statement to executives or the Board of Directors. This statement accounts for the inflow and outflow of cash in an organization in a particular time period. It starts with the Net Income from the Income Statement. Then the non-cash items are listed to…