What this assignment does
The essay sets out visualisation principles, critiques an exploded pie chart of the kind that appears in hospital board papers, redesigns it as a sorted bar chart, proposes a dashboard, and closes on the ethics of visualisation choices.
It handles Tufte properly — including the research that pushes back on him — rather than treating data-ink ratio as settled law.
How it is built
Theory, then a worked critique and redesign, then a dashboard proposal built on the principles established, then ethical reflection. The redesign is the hinge: everything before justifies it and everything after builds on it.
The chart is explicitly flagged as illustrative data created for the exercise, which keeps the critique honest.
Annotated extracts
Three passages, each with a note on why it earns marks and what a weaker answer does in the same place — enough to teach the move, not enough to stand in for the assignment.
The data-ink ratio holds that most of the ink in a graphic should present data, and that non-data ink such as heavy gridlines, borders, shading and three-dimensional effects should be minimised. He labels unnecessary decoration 'chartjunk'. Few (2012) applies similar principles to business graphics. These views have been criticised as overly minimalist; some studies suggest that memorable embellishments can aid recall.
Why this marks well
The canonical theory is stated accurately and then qualified with the evidence against it. Tufte is close to doctrine in visualisation modules, and most essays simply apply him.
The counter-evidence is specific rather than a hedge: embellishment may aid recall, which is a different outcome measure from reading accuracy. Noticing that the two camps optimise for different things is the actual insight, and it explains why the disagreement persists.
This matters for the redesign that follows, because the essay now has to justify choosing clarity over memorability for this audience — a hospital board reading a performance pack — rather than by appeal to authority.
What a weaker answer does here
A weaker answer quotes Tufte on chartjunk, declares the pie chart bad, and redesigns it. The conclusion is right and rests on authority, so the student never demonstrates judgement about when the principle applies.
Choosing to show averages rather than distributions can hide the experiences of the most disadvantaged patients. Aggregating data by region can conceal inequalities within regions, and choosing the start date of a time series can make a trend appear to improve or worsen.
Why this marks well
Three distinct mechanisms by which an honest-looking chart misleads, each one a choice the analyst makes rather than an error they commit. That framing is what makes it an ethics section rather than a warning about lying with statistics.
The examples are also specific to healthcare performance data, which is the essay's subject — averages hiding the worst-served patients is exactly the failure mode of an NHS board pack.
Crucially this turns back on the student's own redesign. Having produced a cleaner chart, the essay asks what the cleaner chart still conceals, which is a far harder question than whether the original was ugly.
What a weaker answer does here
A weaker answer notes that visualisations can be misleading if axes are truncated, shows the classic truncated bar chart example, and moves on. The point is real, universally taught, and disconnected from the healthcare data the essay is actually about.
Figure 2(a) recreates a style of chart frequently found in hospital board papers, here showing the share of an outpatient waiting list by specialty. The values are illustrative and were created for this exercise. The original uses an exploded pie chart with drop shadows and a rainbow palette.
Why this marks well
The provenance of the data is declared before the critique begins. The chart is a recreation with illustrative values, not a real board paper — so the essay cannot be accused of misrepresenting a real organisation's performance.
That is a small discipline with a large payoff in an applied module. It also frees the critique to be blunt about the design without implying criticism of a named trust.
The faults are then named as a list of specific design decisions — exploded segments, drop shadows, rainbow palette — each of which maps onto a principle established in the literature section. The critique is not aesthetic; it is an application of stated criteria.
What a weaker answer does here
A weaker answer states that pie charts are hard to read and replaces it with a bar chart. True, and it skips the step where the specific faults are mapped to the specific principles that condemn them.
What makes this a strong answer
It treats a canonical theory as contested and identifies why the disagreement exists, rather than siding with the famous name.
The ethics section turns on the essay's own redesign instead of on a textbook example of a truncated axis.
Data provenance is declared before any critique, so the argument cannot be mistaken for a claim about a real organisation.
Request the full document
Request the full document
The extracts above are the teaching material and they stay on this page. The complete 2,050-word document is sent person to person, by a human, after a short conversation about what you are working on — so that we can point you at the right parts of it rather than hand over a file and wish you luck.
Both links below already name this sample (DSC-03), so you do not have to describe it.
WhatsApp · +44 7537 126 976 · Email · mia@globalprojectshelp.com
Mon–Sat, 9–22 GMT. No form, no mailing list, no download gate.
Full documents are never published, hosted or linked on this site.
Using this sample honestly
This is a worked example. It sits in the same place as a worked example in a textbook or a past paper with an examiner’s report attached: read it, take the move, then write your own paragraph without it open in another window.
Submitting any part of this document as your own work would be plagiarism — the same offence as copying from a journal article, and detected the same way. If you draw on it, cite it. If a deadline has got to the point where submitting someone else’s paragraph feels like an option, say so when you message us; that is a problem with a legitimate answer and we would rather work on it than watch it happen.
Our full position, including how to declare mentoring support to your institution, is on the academic integrity policy page.
Where to go next
- More MSc Data Science samples The full set of annotated model answers for this course.
- All samples Every annotated model answer in the library, with discipline filters.
- How requesting works What you receive, what you do not, and the conditions attached.
- Academic integrity policy What we do, what we will not do, and how to declare mentoring support.
Model answer written by a Global Projects Help mentor · © Global Projects Help
Published 8 October 2026 · Questions? mia@globalprojectshelp.com