Funnel Plots

As I continue to read through Stephen Few’s “Signal: Understanding What Matters in a World of Noise” there have been some new charts or techniques I’ve come across.

In an attempt to understand their purpose on a deeper level (and implement them in my professional life), I’m on a mission to recreate them in Tableau.

First up is a funnel plot. Stephen explains that funnel plots are good when we may need to adjust something before an accurate comparison can be made. In the example video, I adjust how we’re looking at the average profit per item on a given order compared to all of the orders.

What’s interesting is that in tandem with this exercise, I’m working on an quantitative analysis class for my MBA, so there was quite a bit of intersection. I actually quickly pulled the confidence interval calculation (in particular the standard error equation) from the coursework.

I find that overall statistical jargon is really sub-par in explaining what is going on, and all the resources I used left me oscillating between “oh I totally get this” and “I have no idea what this means.” To that end, I’m open to any comments or feedback to the verbiage used in the video or expert knowledge you’d like to share.

Link to full workbook on Tableau public for calculated fields: https://public.tableau.com/views/FunnelPlot10_2_16/Results?:embed=y&:display_count=yes

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.