A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words, but Only if it is a Good Picture.

Edward Tufte, considered by some as the Leonardo Da Vinci of scientific illustrations, described that, "Excellence in statistical graphics consists of complex ideas communicated with clarity, precision, and efficiency. Graphical display should: show the data, … make large data sets coherent, encourage the eye to compare different pieces of data, … and be closely integrated with the statistical and verbal descriptions of a data set."(1) While Tufte wrote this in 2001, before many of the current analytic technologies were developed, the concepts still apply.