Graphics to facilitate informative discussion and team decision making

Abstract

Everyone knows the expression "A picture is worth a thousand words," and this effectively summarizes the ability of graphical summaries to convey information and persuade. However, in many cases, the goal for the right visualization is to encourage and guide discussion while helping focus a team to make carefully considered, defensible, and data-driven decisions. The aims of graphics differ if we are trying to communicate the merits of a single choice versus outlining several contending alternatives for further comparison and discussion.These choices each have their own strengths and weaknesses depending on how we value different criteria. They also serve different purposes at various stages of decision making. Often the role of statisticians is not to provide a single answer but to provide rich information and summaries in a manageable and compact form to enable productive discussion among team members. Through a series of diverse examples, we present principles and strategies for encouraging discussion and informed decision making and discuss how they can be integrated with versatile use of graphical tools for examining multiple objectives, framing trade-offs between alternatives, and examining the impact of subjective priorities and uncertainty on the final decision.

Publishing an applied statistics paper: Guidance and advice from editors

“…A carefully designed plot can deliver a rich and powerful message to both the reviewers and readers to showcase the importance and merits of the new material being presented. 21 • Include text and explanations to mathematical developments, figures and tables-By providing these cues, the reader will be able to follow the thought progress and extract useful conclusions more easily. The key message of results might be obvious to the researcher of the work, but might not be as self-evident to a reader seeing the material for the first time.…”

Is designed data collection still relevant in the big data era?

“…In this case, the gaps in the data are easily identified by the new requests from the sponsor. In other cases, having effective graphical summaries of the space explored by the existing data can help with planning where gaps lie and how they limit currently available conclusions 58 . For the data competition example, the request for understanding the performance of the top solutions on a new source could not be fulfilled.…”

“…In other cases, having effective graphical summaries of the space explored by the existing data can help with planning where gaps lie and how they limit currently available conclusions. 58 For the data competition example, the request for understanding the performance of the top solutions on a new source could not be fulfilled. In developing the algorithms, the participants required training data about each source to allow them to distinguish between the alternatives for the identification portion of the algorithm.…”

Discussion of “specifying prior distributions in reliability applications”

“…Seeing alternatives and the impact of different choices is useful to facilitate informative discussion and help reach consensus on final results. 9,10 Lastly, I want to compliment the authors for showcasing a well-designed simulation study for a comprehensive comparison of different prior distributions. A thorough evaluation of new methodology and subjective choices across broad application scenarios provides more insightful results on the performance of the methodology.…”

“…In many of these situations, graphical summaries are very effective for comparing choices and visualizing their differences. Seeing alternatives and the impact of different choices is useful to facilitate informative discussion and help reach consensus on final results 9,10 …”