CHAPTER 1 Depicting Data in Telling Ways Data flow from the pulse of business: your operations, your business, your market, your industry. Managers and analysts routinely collect and examine key performance measures to better understand their operations and make good decisions. Statistics is the study of principles and meth- ods for exploring data and making correct conclusions. Developing a full and articulated understanding of key performance measures often begins with a descriptive summary. Descriptive summa- ries can be developed graphically, which we address here, or numerically, which we develop in the next chapter. Descriptive Narration Graphic summaries provide a picture of key data that can be used to elicit important questions, fuel understanding, and facilitate communication. Important data tell stories worth listening to and worthy of retelling. Good graphics capture the detail in the data as well as the overview of their story. They arise in complex environments, so their summaries should depict their complexity. Good graphics present the actual data and show causality, multiple comparisons, multiple perspectives, the effects of the processes that lead to their creation, or the effects of sub- sequent changes made to those processes. They should visually reinforce the reason the data are of significance and integrate number, word, and illustration. Complexity is difficult to display, for obvious reasons. Still, com- plexity can be thoughtfully captured in sequenced layers that allow the content to unfold, inviting interpretation and developing their mean- ing in the process. A rich and insightful discussion of graphic excellence