Real World Fake Data – Hospital ER Recap

Dataset #7 brought us data that mimicked that of an Emergency Room in a Hospital. Thanks to all that participated this round, and there were some great submissions! A couple of things to point out that I saw in several submissions that are worth mentioning. First one is regarding the exclusion of data points, particularly gender. In this dataset, there was a small but important data point of those who are non-conforming in regards to gender. While the data didn’t full identify those who fall into that non-conforming category, they matter. This is a battle they fight every day. Make sure you help so they can be seen along side those who are CIS gendered. As I am writing this we are in the middle of LGBTQ+ Health Awareness Week and while the data is fake, the people are real and they matter. The second thing I noticed, and it’s debatable and I welcome the discussion, was on the line charts there are cases where you can safely exclude zero. If zero may never been a valid value, like CSAT Score, or Wait Time, it’s ok to exclude zero from the axis to allow the “movement” to be seen…. just something to consider. To be fair, it’s never wrong to include the zero.

Alright! I’ve got two submissions this week that really stood out to me, so let’s take a look at those right now!

This first comes from Laxmi Kallimath (Profile / Viz ) who gave us a really nice example including a great “top down” structure. Love the use of color, or really, lack of use of color. The color applied here always denotes the item to look at, keeping it a lovely monochrome feel. The only piece of feedback to share is that I question the gauges. The bar chart on the lower right shows the same data, so if the percentages are important, I’d include them in the label, maybe something like 1,234 | 23%.


The second comes from Lisa Trescott (Profile / Viz) with a super clean and focused dashboard. I love the marginal histogram she’s included and the high/low points on the line charts are really well executed. I love the calendar picker (should out to Zak Geis on that technique) and the detailed view is a nice inclusion as well. The only addition filter I might have included would be the referral department ti give just a little bit more exploratory function to the dashboard.

The 8th dataset is live currently, and it’s all about retail transactions! I’ve included some loyalty information and coupon usage information which will hopefully lead to some deep analysis. Have fun!