(Originally posted on my blog here, on January 25, 2023.)
Do you ever think about how cool those big numbers on a dashboard are, the ones giving you some quick stats about the data?
(Okay, maybe that’s just me; I grew up admiring Xanga layouts and the like, and have always liked learning about composition, how to lay things out, and other things like that visually pleasing.)
Those numbers are called BANs, which stands for big-ass numbers. I used them twice in my HIPAA breaches dashboard, first to introduce the HIPAA breaches dataset and then to provide some numbers pertaining to the whole U.S. for comparison with California, Florida, and New York.
There are definitely other ways to use and display BANs, but for today, I’ll just talk about how I’ve used them so far for this specific dashboard.
The Process
1. To start, figure out what BANs you need. I asked myself: What do you want to use the BANs for?
Sometimes you don’t need a full-blown chart to show an insight; sometimes a number (i.e., a BAN) will do.
I wanted to use them as part of my introduction of the data, so I started thinking about which numbers would be most relevant to the rest of my dashboard. I also wanted to keep those numbers super simple, as I’d be talking more about my insights later, and to have only a few of them, as too many would undermine their purpose of introducing the data.
I settled on three: the years of data in the dataset (since breaches over time was one of the topics I was planning to cover), the number of breaches (the size of the dataset), and the number of people affected (since my dashboard was going to talk about the impact of HIPAA breaches in different ways).
For the Breaching for America section (the maps), which focuses on the state-level impact of HIPAA breaches, I had five BANs to compare the U.S. numbers to the individual states’ numbers.
Four of the BANs pertained to how I gauged impact in four different ways (the number of breaches, the sum of individuals affected by breaches, the percentage of individuals affected by state, and the median size of a breach). The fifth BAN provided an estimate of the U.S. population in 2021.
2. Next: How do you want to order them? Where do you want to place them?
You can order and place the BANs wherever you want; just make sure you have a good reason for your choices.
For example, for the introduction, I put the number of breaches in the middle, as I felt it was the most important number. Then I placed the time period on the left and number of individuals affected on the right because I was planning to start with talking about the rise in breaches over time.
For the Breaching for America section, I felt having BANs for the overall U.S. numbers at the top of the section would make comparing them to the states’ numbers (for California, Florida, and New York) easier. I ordered the BANs in the order of my talking points, starting with 2021 population estimates (I’d initially thought the more residents in a state, the more that state would be impacted by breaches) and ending with the median size of a breach.
3. Now that you’ve decided on the BANs you need, create a new worksheet, name it accordingly, and drag the desired aggregate/number to Text on the Marks Card. Here, I’m creating the BAN for the total number of breaches the U.S. had in 2021:
4. Time to format! Change the font size to be super big; I also like to bold the BAN. Make sure to also change the alignment (I centered mine) and to add in borders if so desired (you can do this part when the sheet makes it into the dashboard as well).
You can also change the color of the text; I didn’t think to do it for this dashboard, but for another one, I changed the font size to black for super important things, while leaving everything else in the default color (dark gray).
The colors of the BAN can also serve as a color legend. Just make sure that they’re readable (e.g., don’t put yellow text on a white background) and that there aren’t so many colors that they become overwhelming. Along that vein, you may also want to consider choosing colors that are colorblind-friendly.
5. Then, add text to the BAN (in a smaller font), but keep the text to a minimum. If you need to include some additional information about the data, consider providing it in that particular BAN’s tooltip.
For the three BANs in the introduction, I placed the words under the BANs because I felt it would be easier to read “4,380 HIPAA breaches” than “HIPAA breaches 4,380.”
For the Breach for America section, I did the reverse as I felt finding the U.S. number would be easier this way, which would then make it easier to compare the U.S. and a particular state’s numbers in turn, as the maps changed.
If you don’t need the tooltip, click open the tooltip and delete the contents. For example, the default tooltip for the number of breaches was this:
This particular tooltip is redundant. Unless there’s other information that’s absolutely necessary to include (for example, with my Survivor dashboard, my tooltips explained how and why I double-counted contestants, etc.), I would suggest getting rid of it completely.
6. Same as with my entry on hover text, switch from Standard to Entire View.
7. When it’s time to add the BANs to your dashboard, make sure you’ve put in your containers first. Use a horizontal one if you want everything to stack side-by-side, vertical if you want to stack them on top of each other. Then, drag in or double-click the sheets to add them to your dashboard (keep them Tiled).
Here’s an example of a horizontal container:
8. Finally, let’s make it so that we don’t have to manually resize the BANs ourselves (though keep in mind that whether you want the BANs to be evenly distributed will depend on what you want your dashboard to look like).
Start with selecting the container by clicking on a BAN (or another worksheet) in the container you want to get to, which will make a dark gray rectangle appear around it. Then, select More Options (the little upside-down triangle):
The More Options menu will then expand. Click Select Container: Horizontal (the container could also be vertical; this all depends on how you’ve arranged your dashboard), which will make a blue rectangle appear around the whole container.
Click on More Options again (the upside-down triangle), then Distribute Contents Evenly.
Ta-da! I still have a lot to learn about when and how to best use BANs, but I hope that you found this introduction to BANs BAN-eficial 😊