The document discusses the importance of including a time component when presenting data in charts and graphs. It argues that without understanding the time period represented, it is difficult to properly interpret results and make informed decisions. The document provides examples showing how breaking down revenue data by month revealed different trends than when presented as aggregate six-month data. It promotes adding a "Time Value Bar" to charts to explicitly indicate the time period of the data to help audiences understand time as a critical aspect of analysis and decision making.

1. Are you Missing Time inyour Business Charts?!
Copyright2013 Vishnuvarthanan Moorthy
Data speaks thousand words and Charts speak more than that! Are you one among them who are
interested in constructing fascinating charts, and do you believe management decisions can be done
easily with few interpretation of charts, then you can spend some “time” to read this…
Any activity/motion/process in this world not only consumes movement or energy, but they also
consume time. Traditionally we have been ignoring time, time and again. Unless we work on trend or
control charts we don’t represent time, instead we work to represent mostly the volume or results in
our charts without giving time scale to it. No result can be produced without time and time always
moves ahead and never comes back. Many a time it’s not a standard practice for us to attach or provide
details of time period of data along with any chart, and we require some manger with common sense to
ask the question, which time period it represents and what is the trend in this time period. If we look at
any output in chart, it’s important to ask the time it consumed/it represents in a chart. A better way of
representing is, every chart shall have time angle to it (only in trend/control charts and some or with
timeline). Today we miss time as an indicator in our charts, and occasionally people represent time in
Chart title. Why it’s so important? It’s important to understand the movement of energy in a space
along with time space, to make a decision which is applicable to the nearest timeline. It helps us to
understand the seasonal variation (time space) of outcome and the current condition/latest time period
of data. Our decisions are not made for past, they are for future and in order to ensure, it’s important to
understand that are we looking at something which is nearer, if not how much old the data in time
space, can we rely on it, all these are possible only with understanding of time space.
For example, we take an IT companies revenue in last six month and it’s presented to the board of
directors and they are asked to understand, which technology they are strong in terms of revenue
making…

2. From this they understand that Java and ERP – Oracle is the major revenue contributing technologies in
the period of Apr –Sep 13. As the per the second chart it’s clear that 72.45 cumulative percentage of
revenue comes only from these 2 technologies.
However any wise man, would like to ask the presenter, where is the clarity in time stamp and how the
revenue growth with respect to time space. So if we look at them little closely, by splitting the data by
Apr-Jun and Jul –Sep, what we see is down below charts,
23%
10%
3%
4%
49%
8%
2% 1%
Revenue Share - 2013
ERP - Oracle
ERP - SAP
ERP - Peoplesoft
CRM Package
Java
.Net
C++
Fortran
49.19
72.45
82.29
90.3493.9296.6098.75100.00
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
250,000
300,000
Revenue Share Contributors
Individual
Percentage

3. In the period Apr-Jun again Java and Oracle did contribute 80%
0
50,000
100,000
150,000
200,000
Time Period wise Revenue Share
Revenue in $ (Apr-Jun) Revenue in $ (Jul-Sep)
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
140,000
160,000
180,000
200,000
Revenue in Apr-Jun
Revenue in $ (Apr-Jun)
Percentage

4. In the Period Jul – Sep, we have a surprise that SAP is in top along with Java. Similarly overall revenue is
also reduced in the second period.
Hence by looking at the first pie chart and cumulative chart (custom Pareto) if the Board of directors
takes a decision, will it represent the nearest timeline?! Can we take a decision which truly represents
our current condition? The sample case which we have discussed here is of 6 month and for the financial
data it is pretty much fine to have monthly data. But in other cases, where the data is from process or
from people and there is not much assumed correlation exist between time space and data, we ignore
the time space and which is dangerous for our interpretation. Technically today we don’t have a solution
to represent Timescale as an axis or in a multidimensional to explain along with data (which are
affordable and easily representable in single chart, as each chart has different purpose and we need
additional chart to represent time in some cases). It’s a good practice to construct additional time
charts, however when you don’t want to present all of them to your management and clutter the
presentation, at least it’s important to put a timescale to a chart, which is a reminder for the audience of
the chart to think in the perspective of Time.
Time Bar is something very simple, which we can add to our any of the chart to communicate, what
exactly the time period we are talking about, the below given one is standard one, which can be easily
customized and added to your pie chart, Bar charts, etc. (where time is not one of the major axis)…
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
120,000
Revenue in Jul-Sep
Revenue in $ (Jul-Sep)
Percentage

5. Add this bar to your existing charts, the bottom scale represents 1 to 60 counts (lowest unit for seconds)
and on the top the scale has “Seconds to Decade”. You can tell Time Value by moving the triangular bars
to respective units and value. From the given sample Time Value bar chart we can understand that the
bar states “6 month” data.
So in our case, we would modify it to read in the following way,
What have we changed? Nothing much! But we ensured the reader of the chart is fully aware of the
Time Space and can ask /think to understand the time space and your data. This “Time Value Bar”should

6. be used in most of the condition to ensure we all respect time and take decision which is related to our
nearest time and we don’t miss time from our Charts…