A data analyst notices that a line chart showing monthly sales over the past two years has a steep drop in one month. Upon investigation, the analyst discovers that a new sales region was added mid-month and the data was not normalized. Which of the following best practices should the analyst apply to communicate this insight accurately?
Trap 1: Remove the month with the drop from the report.
Removing data without explanation hides important context.
Trap 2: Use a bar chart instead to show the data.
Changing chart type does not address the normalization issue.
Trap 3: Present the data as-is and let stakeholders interpret the drop.
This would mislead stakeholders because the drop is due to unnormalized data.
- A
Remove the month with the drop from the report.
Why wrong: Removing data without explanation hides important context.
- B
Use a bar chart instead to show the data.
Why wrong: Changing chart type does not address the normalization issue.
- C
Normalize the sales data by region and explain the data anomaly in the report.
Normalization corrects the artifact, and explanation provides transparency.
- D
Present the data as-is and let stakeholders interpret the drop.
Why wrong: This would mislead stakeholders because the drop is due to unnormalized data.