Comments on: Bad Graphics – Funnel Chart

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:11:24 +0000

You’re right. If your goal is to represent data to a data-minded audience, the funnel is just distracting.

But if you need to show a general idea, the funnel is a concept that more people will understand, which is sure to make it more powerful.

Simply put, it’s bigger at the top and smaller at the bottom. Your audience probably won’t think it through more than that.

By: hnb

hnb — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:20:15 +0000

Thank you, I nearly wanted to write something similar myself. This is just a horrible concept..

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:33:08 +0000

The waterfall plot isn't bad. Have you tried my waterfall utility?

By: derek

derek — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:30:22 +0000

No problem. By the way, I feel I owe my particular company's bosses an apology, since I have been seeing a large number of diagrams all about progressive shavings-off of an initial figure to get a diminished final figure, and the preferred graph form for it that seems to float their boat is not the Sankey diagram but the waterfall graph, which is reasonable enough.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:27:33 +0000

I can’t find a setting in WordPress to change this. Maybe there’s some plugin I don’t have, or some code I could write, but I’m not a web designer. Just make a blatant note in a post and I’ll embed the image.

By: derek

derek — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:59:13 +0000

Yes, that’s the string I cut and pasted. It seems clear to me that WordPress is filtering it out before it reaches you, the moderator.

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:09:54 +0000

Your link script comes through, but not the image script. Maybe that’s how WordPress protects me from porn spam. I’ve added your image to the latest comment. FWIW, the html I used is

Since I check comments before letting them appear, you could put a link to the image with some ugly character string, like “###### PLEASE EMBED THIS IMAGE ######” and I’ll insert the code. No big deal, I’m glad to get thoughtful comments.

By: derek

derek — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:42:21 +0000

Jon, once again my Excel Sankey diagram is lost in the ether, even though this time I copied the IMG tag from your comment above. Are you sure anyone except the WordPress blog's own author is able to embed images in the comments?

By: Jon Peltier

Jon Peltier — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:24:18 +0000

Derek - I thought of SanKey diagrams while writing this up, but didn't want to confuse the issue. Wikipedia has an entry on (a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sankey_diagram">Sankey Diagrams, and I also found a list of Sankey Diagram Software.

There is a free version that works in Excel called Sankey Helper. I was going to use it to make a Sankey diagram matching my simple bar chart, but there is a lot of interaction required. So I included the drawing above from the Wikipedia entry.

By: derek

derek — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:54:48 +0000

If you want to be fancy, you could use a Sankey diagram to show the power losses at each stage. That should wow the bosses as much as a funnel picture :-)