This 4-part article was written by Frank Smietana, Corporate Business Intelligence Strategist, Dimensional Insight

Today's dashboard environments provide developers with a rich set of indicators and charts, ranging from bullet graphs to sparklines and bar charts to bubble graphs.

Additionally, numerous formatting options such as splines and 3D displays are available, adding even more complexity. To the casual observer, chart types and options may appear to be largely interchangeable and are simply left to the discretion of the developer.

But as the art and science of effective dashboard design has evolved, data visualization gurus have established some guidelines regarding which charts and indicators to use for various types of data and how to present those charts most effectively.