business & economics / strategic planning

"A good visualization can communicate the nature and potential impact of ideas more powerfully than any other form of communication. For a long time, "dataviz" was left to specialists-data scientists and professional designers. No longer. A new generation of tools and massive amounts of available data make it easy for anyone to create visualizations that communicate ideas far more effectively than generic spreadsheet charts ever could. What's more, building good charts is quickly becoming a need-to-have skill for managers-if you're not doing it, another manager is, and they're getting noticed for it, and getting credit for your company's success. In Good Charts, dataviz maven Scott Berinato provides an essential guide to how visualization works and how to use this new language to impress and persuade. Dataviz is where spreadsheets and word processors were in the early 1980s-on the cusp of changing how we work. Berinato lays out a system for thinking visually and building better charts through a process of talking, sketching, and prototyping. The book goes well beyond proffering a set of static rules for making visualizations and taps into well-established and vanguard research in visual perception and neuroscience, as well as the emerging field of visualization science, to explore why good charts (and bad ones) create "feelings behind our eyes." Along the way, Berinato also includes many engaging vignettes of dataviz pros, illustrating the ideas in practice. Good Charts will help you turn plain, uninspiring charts that merely present information into smart, effective visualizations that powerfully convey ideas. This is your go-to guide for dataviz-the new language of business." --.

"An eye-opening and engrossing look at rare moments, why they occur, and how they shape our world In The Improbability Principle, the renowned statistician David J. Hand unveils his groundbreaking argument that extraordinarily rare events are in fact commonplace. Weaving together fascinating new ways to think about chance, Hand highlights his "law of near enough," the "look elsewhere effect," and more, doing for probability what Newton's laws of motion did for mechanics. Through humorous and engaging tales of two-time lottery winners, gambling gone wrong, and bizarre coincidences that we can't quite fathom, Hand argues that extremely unlikely events must happen, and no mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why. Hand's investigation, grounded in statistics and brought to life with fascinating anecdotes, finally explains "unexplainable" events such as unexpectedly bumping into a friend in a foreign country and coming across an unfamiliar word twice in one day. Along the way, we learn what the Bible and Shakespeare have in common, just how to win the lottery, why financial crashes are par for the course, and why lightning does strike the same place (and the same person) more than once. As Hand makes clear, we can rest assured that we'll experience a "miracle" roughly once per month. An irresistible adventure into the laws behind chance moments, The Improbability Principle transforms how we think about business decisions, everyday encounters, serendipity, and luck"--.