I am no longer surprised when I see a column graph in a quarterly or annual financial report that is created to give the impression that the results shown are better than the actual numbers shown. The graph does not start the vertical axis at zero so the height of the columns is not accurately…
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.
FinancialViz: “cool” visual doesn’t give accurate comparison
Too often I see financial professionals get seduced by the desire to create a “cool” visual. Maybe its one they’ve seen online or in a publication. It looks really neat and they think it would make them look goo if they used it in a presentation. Too often these “cool” visuals don’t communicate the message…
FinancialViz: waterfall chart using rectangles instead of Excel introduces doubt
When things don’t add up in a data visual used in a financial presentation it introduces doubt in the mind of the viewer. If this visual is not correct, what else may not be correct? When presenting financials we want to inspire confidence. It is important to ensure that the visuals we create are accurate.…
Resources for Creating Excel charts that are easy to update and re-use session
Thanks for attending or viewing my session at Excel Virtually Global 2022 titled Creating Excel charts that are easy to update and re-use. Here are some resources that can help you take your skills further on this topic. To learn more about scaling, which allows you to create a graph with data series that are…
Why “We’ll send one person to a public course and then they can train the entire department” doesn’t actually improve productivity
Instead of investing in a customized training course on a key software tool for a group of employees, too many managers think the cheap route will work. They send one person on a public course with the instruction that when they get back they will teach the rest of the group what they learned. The…
Use critical thinking skills to accurately interpret a graph (& create accurate graphs yourself)
When you look at a graph, you immediately interpret the message using the visual cues in the graph. If one column is twice as tall as another column you deduce that the value of the taller column is double that of the shorter column. When looking at graphs we need to use our critical thinking…
Hybrid Event Lesson 11: Use one device in the room for audio
This article shares one of the lessons I learned when planning and running a hybrid class reunion event in May 2022. Read the introduction and see the other lessons in this series here. Lesson Poor sound is one of the biggest complaints in hybrid meetings. Either the people in the room can’t hear the remote…
Why today’s Apple Watch Series 8 and iPhone 14 launch is not a model you should follow in your business presentations
Apple just finished its latest product introduction. Soon we will see the parade of presentation experts and enthusiasts who say you should use today’s launch as a model for your own business presentations. Please don’t listen to them. Here’s why. First, you don’t deliver global product launch presentations. As a business professional you deliver project…
“Our staff don’t have time for training!” Why this myth is hurting many Canadian businesses and leading to “quiet quitting”
Since the 2008-9 recession many Canadian business professionals have been doing the work of 1.5-3 people. Companies downsized during that time and have never returned to staffing levels required to actually do the amount of work required. Add on the stress of the pandemic and employees have had enough. The recent “quiet quitting” is a…
Excel/PowerPoint tip: Accurately estimating the values in a column/bar/line chart image
What do you do in this situation. You get a chart from another source, like a website or PDF and it doesn’t have data labels with the values. You need the values to incorporate into your analysis or your chart. How can you accurately estimate the values from an image of the graph? This video…