"You have a mound of data sitting in front of you and a suite of computation tools at your disposal. And yet, you're stumped as to how to turn that data into insight. Which part of that data actually matters, and where is this insight hidden? If you're a data scientist who struggles to navigate the murky space between data and insight, this book will help you think about and reshape data for visual data exploration. It's ideal for relatively new data scientists, who may be computer-knowledgeable and data-knowledgeable, but do not yet know how to create effective, explorable representations of data. With this book, you'll learn: Task analysis, driven by a series of leading questions that draw out the important aspects of the data to be explored; Visualization patterns, each of which take a different perspective on data and answer different questions; A taxonomy of visualizations for common data types; Techniques for gathering design requirements; When and where to make use of statistical methods."--

Effective visualization is the best way to communicate information from the increasingly large and complex datasets in the natural and social sciences. But with the increasing power of visualization software today, scientists, engineers, and business analysts often have to navigate a bewildering array of visualization choices and options. This practical book takes you through many commonly encountered visualization problems, and it provides guidelines on how to turn large datasets into clear and compelling figures. What visualization type is best for the story you want to tell? How do you make informative figures that are visually pleasing? Author Claus O. Wilke teaches you the elements most critical to successful data visualization. Explore the basic concepts of color as a tool to highlight, distinguish, or represent a value Understand the importance of redundant coding to ensure you provide key information in multiple ways Use the book’s visualizations directory, a graphical guide to commonly used types of data visualizations Get extensive examples of good and bad figures Learn how to use figures in a document or report and how employ them effectively to tell a compelling story

Data Visualization Made Simple is a practical guide to the fundamentals, strategies, and real-world cases for data visualization, an essential skill required in today’s information-rich world. With foundations rooted in statistics, psychology, and computer science, data visualization offers practitioners in almost every field a coherent way to share findings from original research, big data, learning analytics, and more. In nine appealing chapters, the book: examines the role of data graphics in decision-making, sharing information, sparking discussions, and inspiring future research; scrutinizes data graphics, deliberates on the messages they convey, and looks at options for design visualization; and includes cases and interviews to provide a contemporary view of how data graphics are used by professionals across industries Both novices and seasoned designers in education, business, and other areas can use this book’s effective, linear process to develop data visualization literacy and promote exploratory, inquiry-based approaches to visualization problems.

An accessible primer on how to create effective graphics from data This book provides students and researchers a hands-on introduction to the principles and practice of data visualization. It explains what makes some graphs succeed while others fail, how to make high-quality figures from data using powerful and reproducible methods, and how to think about data visualization in an honest and effective way. Data Visualization builds the reader’s expertise in ggplot2, a versatile visualization library for the R programming language. Through a series of worked examples, this accessible primer then demonstrates how to create plots piece by piece, beginning with summaries of single variables and moving on to more complex graphics. Topics include plotting continuous and categorical variables; layering information on graphics; producing effective “small multiple” plots; grouping, summarizing, and transforming data for plotting; creating maps; working with the output of statistical models; and refining plots to make them more comprehensible. Effective graphics are essential to communicating ideas and a great way to better understand data. This book provides the practical skills students and practitioners need to visualize quantitative data and get the most out of their research findings. Provides hands-on instruction using R and ggplot2 Shows how the “tidyverse” of data analysis tools makes working with R easier and more consistent Includes a library of data sets, code, and functions

One of the "six best books for data geeks" - Financial Times With over 200 images and extensive how-to and how-not-to examples, this new edition has everything students and scholars need to understand and create effective data visualisations. Combining ‘how to think’ instruction with a ‘how to produce’ mentality, this book takes readers step-by-step through analysing, designing, and curating information into useful, impactful tools of communication. With this book and its extensive collection of online support, readers can: Decide what visualisations work best for their data and their audience using the chart gallery See data visualisation in action and learn the tools to try it themselves Follow online checklists, tutorials, and exercises to build skills and confidence Get advice from the UK’s leading data visualisation trainer on everything from getting started to honing the craft.

Data visualization is an efficient and effective medium for communicating large amounts of information, but the design process can often seem like an unexplainable creative endeavor. This concise book aims to demystify the design process by showing you how to use a linear decision-making process to encode your information visually. Delve into different kinds of visualization, including infographics and visual art, and explore the influences at work in each one. Then learn how to apply these concepts to your design process. Learn data visualization classifications, including explanatory, exploratory, and hybrid Discover how three fundamental influences—the designer, the reader, and the data—shape what you create Learn how to describe the specific goal of your visualization and identify the supporting data Decide the spatial position of your visual entities with axes Encode the various dimensions of your data with appropriate visual properties, such as shape and color See visualization best practices and suggestions for encoding various specific data types

A guide to the basics of information visualization that teaches nonprogrammers how to use advanced data mining and visualization techniques to design insightful visualizations. In the age of Big Data, the tools of information visualization offer us a macroscope to help us make sense of the avalanche of data available on every subject. This book offers a gentle introduction to the design of insightful information visualizations. It is the only book on the subject that teaches nonprogrammers how to use open code and open data to design insightful visualizations. Readers will learn to apply advanced data mining and visualization techniques to make sense of temporal, geospatial, topical, and network data. The book, developed for use in an information visualization MOOC, covers data analysis algorithms that enable extraction of patterns and trends in data, with chapters devoted to “when” (temporal data), “where” (geospatial data), “what” (topical data), and “with whom” (networks and trees); and to systems that drive research and development. Examples of projects undertaken for clients include an interactive visualization of the success of game player activity in World of Warcraft; a visualization of 311 number adoption that shows the diffusion of non-emergency calls in the United States; a return on investment study for two decades of HIV/AIDS research funding by NIAID; and a map showing the impact of the HiveNYC Learning Network. Visual Insights will be an essential resource on basic information visualization techniques for scholars in many fields, students, designers, or anyone who works with data.