Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

The logical ordering of categories When designing any graph showing categorical data, be thoughtful about how your categories are ordered. If there is a natural ordering to your categories, it may make sense to leverage that. For example, if your categories are age groups—0–10 years old, 11–20 years old, and so on—keep the categories in numerical order. If, however, there isn’t a natural ordering in your categories that makes sense to leverage, think about what ordering of your data will make the most sense. Being thoughtful here can mean providing a construct for your audience, easing the interpretation process. Your audience (without other visual cues) will typically look at your visual starting at the top left and zigzagging in “z” shapes. This means they will encounter the top of your graph first. If the biggest category is the most important, think about putting that first and ordering the rest of the categories in decreasing numerical order. Or if the smallest is most important, put that at the top and order by ascending data values.