Field note · May 4, 2024

support-tickets.priority: 4 values, 92.6% in the top three

4 values with 48.4% concentrated in one of them, and what that does to every chart downstream.

1 min read ·Visualization ·visualization practice

Distribution of priority on support-tickets, because every chart built on it inherits this shape.

  • normal — 1,935 rows, 48.4%
  • high — 903 rows, 22.6%
  • low — 864 rows, 21.6%
  • urgent — 298 rows, 7.4%

The top three take 92.6% between them. With only 4 values there is no tail to worry about, which makes this a genuinely easy column to chart.

sql
select priority,
       count(*)                                      as rows,
       round(100.0 * count(*) / sum(count(*)) over (), 1) as pct,
       round(avg(first_response_min)::numeric, 2)             as avg_first_response_min
from support_tickets
group by 1
order by rows desc;

The second column is the one that matters. Share of rows tells you what is common; avg_first_response_min tells you whether the common thing is the important thing. They disagree more often than not, and a chart that shows only the first is answering the easier question.

Decide what happens to the tail before you plot it. "Other" as an explicit bucket is honest; twelve slivers is not, and neither is silently taking the top eight.