We describe stick diagrams, which are simple graphs designed to provide quick insight into complicated ionic equilibria. Despite their inherent crudeness, they can be used to obtain numerical solutions to quantitative equilibrium problems. Moreover, they show when those quantitative answers are likely to be too approximate. Finally, we discuss how to make activity corrections, and conclude that activity corrections are often as large or larger than the errors involved in using stick diagrams. Therefore, in the absence of activity corrections, stick diagrams are usually quite adequate.