Monday, October 10, 2016

info visualisation - Representing large numbers


I'm developing a charting application. There could be a situation where I would have to display large numbers on the chart. The problem is that they number labels have to fit inside the chart columns, which are limited in space and I have only 4 characters to display the numbers.


I am currently using multipliers, so that e.g. 1234567 is displayed as 1.2M. I like this solution, but while K is an acceptable suffix for thousands, there's no such suffix for billions.


What can I do to remedy this? Any good ways of displaying the data?



Answer




Some ideas :



  • Are you sure you only have 4 characters to display the numbers? You should think pixels instead of characters. Maybe you can use a 8 pixels police that would make you gain a character.

  • Can't you use a magnifier, a tooltip or something else of that kind?

  • If it is a charter application, I guess numbers are important: if you have only 4 characters to display it the chances are great the interface is not ready.

  • You are probably not going to compare millions with billions or thousands: why don't you name the numbers column adequattly ? For instance: Turn-over in billions


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