That’s Barney’s (Neil Patrick Harris) infamous one-liner from CBS’s "How I Met Your Mother". It’s a favorite show of ours (the wife and I).

Now, Neil was recently nominated for an Emmy for his work as Barney on the show - he is the gooey, sticky center that holds it all together. So, after seeing the nom nod, my wife points me to "Barney’s Blog" thinking that I should have some fun with Barney’s statisticovisual (I love making up words) approach to dating.

WELL…

Not to be a downer or anything but my amusement was ruined by several factors.

Take for instance, the first bar chart which is labeled "BARNEY STINSON’S HOOK UP PERCENTAGES"

So, the chart purports that Barney’s hookup percentage ranges from 200 to 500 percent, depending on the condition of not having or having Ted with him. Hmm, so when the big B is flying solo he hooks up 200% of the time? And when he has Ted with him the percentage goes up to 500%? Um, part of the Barney character is a near-pathological need to be right and this ain’t right. Also on this chart are Ted’s hook up percentages which range from 0% (without Barney) to what looks to be somewhere between 10 and 20 percent (with Barney). So, half of the chart is wrong and half is correct?

This chart is SO not awesome (as Barney might say).

Also, what’s with the lazy reliance on Excel 2003’s default chart settings? Barney is an over-the-top kind of guy and if he’s going to go the trouble of creating these charts and putting them up on foam cores then he is certainly going to send them to a graphic designer (at the least, hopefully he’d send them to a data visualist to really make them sing) to dress them up - I imagine Barney sitting there, screaming "Suit UP!" at his laptop.

Finally, in the last line chart, the y-axis is labeled "Level of Hotness", I’m pretty sure that Barney, if he existed, would have labeled that axis "Level of Awesomeness"

Sheesh, CBS marketers, make sure to get into character before writing these posts.