Do you need to share statistics in presentations?

Maybe you’re getting ready for a talk at a conference.

Or, maybe you’re sharing updates with coworkers in a staff meeting.

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to explain dense graphs one slide at a time, which makes it easier for our audience to follow along.

Before

Last summer, I was keynoting the National Birth Defects Prevention Network’s annual conference in Atlanta.

Here’s what one of the health department’s original graphs looked like.

We wanted to make a presentation-ready version.

If you work in public health, then you know that the tiny text and statistical terminology is pretty common in scientific graphs. (BUT IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE!!!)

After

We don’t need a complete overhaul.

I made some very light edits to the existing graph:

• Direct labels (instead of legends) ensure that the graph is “Big A” Accessible (a.k.a. 508/ADA compliant).
• Horizontal text (instead of vertical text) is faster to read.
• I removed the grid lines.
• I enlarged the font (the body font is size 18, which is my bare-minimum font size for presentation slides).

Storyboarding for a Live Presentation

Now that we’ve tackled the quick edits, we’re ready to adjust the graph for a presentation.

We’ve already done the hardest part: Getting the “final” slide ready.

Now, with a few more minutes of planning time, we’ll create the “build-up” slides, like this:

What the Presentation Will Look & Sound Like

For statistical graphs, I often begin by explaining the axes.

I’d show the y-axis, and say, “Next, let’s talk about coarctation of the aorta. We’re going to look at the prevalence per 100,000 births.”

I’d click, move to the next slide, and say, “…and we’re looking at data from 2007 through 2019. The numbers vary a lot each year, so we’re looking at 5-year moving averages in this graph. The moving averages are going to help us focus on the bigger picture.”

“Here’s what we predicted would happen. You can see some slight variations over time, but we generally estimated that there would be 3.6 to 3.7 cases of coarctation of the aorta per 100,000 births.”

“Here’s what actually happened. There were slightly fewer cases of coarctation of the aorta than what we predicted. And the numbers are actually going down slightly over time.”

Finally, I’d click, move to the next slide, and say, “Here’s the confidence interval with a 95% band.”

The graph is explained piecemeal, RATHER THAN SHOWING EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE.

If we show everything all at once, then my audience would be looking at one thing while I’m talking about something completely different. That’s Death by PowerPoint.

The Bottom Line

We don’t have to delete or dumb-down our statistical graphs.

We just have to explain them piecemeal.

It’s counterintuitive, but sometimes we need more slides — one slide per sentence or two of speaking points.

We’re not talking for longer, or running over time.

We’re not talking faster, or slurring our speech.

We’re simply clicking through our slides one at a time to match our speaking points.

A few more minutes of planning time on our end… to make sure our audience can follow our dense graphs. A necessary trade-off.

Learn More

Browse more examples of storyboarding in these blog posts.

You’ll also practice this technique inside Powerful Presentations.

I was recently working with an online course student to visualize data for her country’s government officials.

These aren’t her real categories or real numbers, but you get the idea.

Before: Reading Numbers

Her “before” version looked something like this:

She had small n’s — a unique situation!

My definition of a “small” number is less than 100 — an arbitrary cut-off point that I learned from a past supervisor, and I’ve stuck with for years.

Not only was the total under 100, but each of the cells was under 100, too.

After: Skimming Visuals

There are several ways to bring the table to life.

During a 1:1 consultation, we talked through a few ideas together.

Idea 1: Heat Table

This easy visual — made via Excel’s Conditional Formatting — would be a great addition to the appendix.

If you’re familiar with the 30-3-1 approach to reporting, then you know I put allllll the tables in the appendix.

In other words, I aim for zero or few tables within the body of the report. The report’s body should focus on key findings with graphs, not dilute the data with eeeeeeverything in a table.

Idea 2: Clustered Columns

This is Ann K. Emery’s least favorite chart of all time. I’ll never let any of my students use one of these bad graphs!!!!

It’s the default option — we simply highlight the summary table in Excel, and insert a chart — and we get this lazy chart.

There’s too much going on, so it doesn’t tell us anything.

The color-coding by category is off.

There’s a separate legend, which is an accessibility no-no.

Idea 3: Small Multiples Histograms

With a re-orientation and re-coloring, it’s easy to build small multiples histograms.

But, the vertical columns didn’t fit her portrait Word doc:

The the horizontal bars would be totally fine.

My only hesitation was that bar charts are… boring.

I’ll never let my students have only bar charts in their reports, slides, dashboards, or infographics. Our viewers deserve variety.

Plus, this was a unique small n situation. Let’s capitalize on that!

Idea 4: Icon Arrays

To bring the small n to life, we tried an icon array.

The student liked this option because:

• It’s very, very, very fast to create — much faster than creating and formatting a chart.
• It was similar to her original table — the same rows and columns.
• Right away, she could see how much bigger Category A was than the other categories.

Yes, I realize the irony…

I just wrote a blog post asking you to humanize your data with realistic people icons, which would be a step above shapes like circles and squares.

We tried realistic people icons, too.

They look fine close-up.

But they simply didn’t fit. In other words, there would have to be fewer icons, and/or they’d have to be much larger, to even be legible.

They just look like chicken scratch, sigh.

Behind the Scenes

I’ve written and spoken about symbol fonts a million times.

Webdings, StateFace, and WeePeople are personal favorites.

Yep, these are simply Webdings n’s!

Never, ever add a bajillion individual circles to your Word doc or PowerPoint slide. What a waste of our own time. Just use symbol fonts.

Made Within Minutes

Can you type n’s into your table?

And change the font into Webdings?

Even if you’re the slowest typer in the world… I promise it won’t take long to type some n’s.

Then, simply adjust the font colors, so that you’re using one brand color per category.

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to see the Excel file and Word doc used in the blog post? Download them here.