![\"Booz,](\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/cqtwo\/files\/2008\/09\/boozballs.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nThey’re a consulting staple, and I call them Booz balls because, I have always assumed, they were first used at Booz, Allen, Hamilton.<\/a><\/p>\n But why Harvey?<\/p>\n Wikipedia has the answer<\/a>: Harvey Poppel, a Booz consultant, invented them, so you either honor the man (Harvey balls) or his employer (Booz balls.)<\/p>\n There’s even a very useful Harvey balls font<\/a>, from a former Booz consultant of course, which gives you a lot of flexibility to use them in, say, Excel.\u00a0 (For presentations, I think you’re still better off using a graphic.)\u00a0 You have to be aware of how to use them, though, because in the example above the balls represent one to nine; five and above are variations on one to four, not actually higher values.<\/p>\n Your browser may not represent these properly, but there are also Unicode values for Booz\/Harvey balls:<\/p>\n \u25cb \u25d4 \u25d1 \u25d5 \u25cf<\/p>\n Now — and this is really a large piece of awesomeness — you should be careful not to confuse Harvey (Poppel’s)<\/em> balls<\/em> with Harvey Ball<\/em>, the inventor of the smiley face.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently, a colleague of mine referred to “Harvey balls” when I knew he mean “Booz balls,” those quarter\/half\/three-quarter filled circles that graphically represent low to high scales.\u00a0 If you need to show, say in a table, a set of values, … Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n