Reddit mentions of Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten

The "bible" is "The Grammar of Graphics" by Leland Wilkinson. (link to amazon). The "gg" of ggplot2 stands for grammar of graphics.

Then we go into other books, resources that help with actually showing visualizations:

• Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten [Few, 2004]
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [Tufte, 2001]
  
• The Functional Art [Cairo, 2012]
  
• Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps [Bertin, 2010]
  
  Then we can look at the "Table of Elements of Data Visualization":
  
  
• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
  
• The Data Visualisation Catalogue
  
  Then, we can look at some blogs to help you see what works and doesn't work:
  
  
• http://helpmeviz.com/
  
• http://wtfviz.net/
  
• http://thumbsupviz.com/
  
  Finally, some blog posts about other people in data visualization that you can learn from:
  
  
• An Incomplete List of Females in Data Visualization
  
• Data and visualization blogs worth following
  
• Teaching data visualization: Recommended readings and resources
  
• 90 dataviz Tumblr blogs to follow
  
• The 30 data viz blogs you can't miss - in one place

>virtually anyone who isn't an engineer (or "math guy" as I've heard them pejoratively called) isn't going to understand why the graph/chart/graphic must be produced at a certain proportion.

FWIW, most engineers are clueless on this as well. Infographics is a specialized field, and it's not taught in the engineering curriculum.

A simple solution, if you want to learn more - read Edward Tufte's and Stephen Few's books.

[edit] For starters, I recommend

Few, Stephen, [Show Me The Numbers](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0970601999?ie=UTF8&tag=andmyaxe-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0970601999 "Warning: Associate tag thingy") (Analytics Press, 2004)

I am currently working in a data warehousing and business intelligence role at a bank. Aside from the basics of ETL, SQL and OLAP, I would recommend having at least a basic understanding of financial accounting. I have also found it useful to read The Data Warehousing Toolkit as well as some other Kimball books.

For entry-level work, there are two recommendations of related skill that have served me quite well to get my foot in the door and show added value: Excel and reporting.

Every institution needs reports developed and it amazes me how rare it is to find well-built reports that clearly communicate their intended information. Being able to follow a few simple guidelines for effective layout and design go a long way. Edward Tufte wrote the definitive work regarding this, but I use Stephen Few's work for more up-to-date examples.

Excel has proven itself very useful for quick ad-hoc analysis and manipulations. Also, it is a mainstay application for most financial services companies and being fluent in functions, pivot charts and VBA is quite useful.