When I’m chatting with other chart creators, it sometimes feels like there are two different groups that live in two completely different worlds:

The first world is populated by those who create charts for relatively data-savvy audiences. In this world, chart types like scatterplots and histograms are “basic” chart types that everyone knows how to read.

The second world is populated by those who regularly create charts for “non-data” audiences who often struggle with anything other than simple bar, line, or pie charts.

When I’m chatting with chart creators in the first world and I suggest that the second world is actually huge, and that many audiences don’t know how to read chart types like scatterplots and histograms, they’re often astonished, and sometimes they simply don’t believe me.

The thing is, over the years, I’ve stood in front of literally thousands of blank faces when showing these chart types—even faces with “data” in their job titles. There’s a reason why you don’t see these chart types in mainstream news media outlets very often, even in high-brow pubs like The Economist and The New York Times: Editors know that many of their readers won’t know how to read them.

When I suggest that many people don’t know how to read these chart types, though, I get plenty of objections, such as…

“These chart types are taught in high school! Everyone who’s graduated high school should know how to read them!” If these audiences did learn to read these chart types in high school, they’ve either forgotten or they didn’t really grasp them in the first place.

“OK, maybe Jane-Q-Public/man-on-the-street might not know how to read them, but anyone who’s reached any kind of managerial position would know.” It would be great if that were true, but there are plenty of senior executives in a wide variety of industries who don’t know how to read these chart types. I know this can be hard for some to believe, but I’ve seen it many, many times.

“Even if someone doesn’t know how to read these chart types, they’re very easy to explain and understand.” As someone who’s explained these chart types to thousands of people, I can confidently say that no, they’re not easy to understand. If you’ve been using scatterplots and histograms for years, they may seem almost self-explanatory, but they’re actually quite abstract and require several leaps in understanding to read correctly. And, yes, even for people who are quite sharp in other domains.

Exactly which chart types do I see general audiences struggle with? Stay tuned for my next post, in which I’ll provide the full list.

BTW…

Registration is now open for my upcoming live online public workshop in February! Interested in taking my Practical Charts and/or Practical Dashboards course? Early-bird discounts end Jan. 15. Info/registration page: https://www.practicalreporting.com/feb-2025-workshop