DATA VIZ 101:Tools , tricks, tips...

...and more for non-programmers and deadline-chasers

What isdata visualization?Simplest answer = graphical display of information

WAYMORE COMPLEX"By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map. And when you're lost in information, an information map is kind of useful."

-David McCandless, author, data journalist, information designer.

"The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see."

-John Tukey

"When information was scarce, most of our efforts were devoted to hunting and gathering. Now that information is abundant, processing is more important."

-Phillip Meyer, journalist and professor at UNC, Chapel Hill

Uses• Get a bird's eye view of "Big Data" information overload

• Discover hidden insights

• Highlight outliers visually

• Understand patterns and trends instantly and visually

Characteristics... of data viz

• Data itself is the story; standalone narrative (often coupled w/ text).

• Interactive, communicative, visual.

• Ranges from simple (charts) to complex (database-driven applications).

• Both a technique and a format.

Infographics ≠data visualizationHave different connotations

(Although many, including Alberto Cairo, information design legend, defend the term 'infographic' in its original sense)

Infographics tend to be...

Hard to readOverly artsy

Distracting from data.

"He's 243 percent baby

boomer!"Example of "chartjunk"

What's wrong here?

Brief history•Grew out of CAR (computer assisted-reporting) tradition

•First major modern use: John Snow’s 1854 cholera map (right)

•Has coincided with the era of “Big Data”

"There's a strand of the data viz world that argues that everything could be a bar chart. That's possibly true but also possibly a world without joy."

-Amanda Cox, New York Times

"Data journalism is the new punk. Anyone can do

it."-Simon Rogers, The

Guardian

BUT HOW?!

Free, open-source, code-free tools

Now, let's take a look at some...

1.

Datawrapper.de

2.

Timeline.js

3.

CartoDb

Just a few of dozens of tools to democratize data visualization.

See Edmodoand links for exhaustive resource list.

Steps for any data viz project:1. Research - Think of topic and research factors.

2. Find - Locate and/or obtain/scrape the data.

3. Analyze - Clean errors, evaluate what data says, crunch numbers,look for trends/inconsistencies.

4. Visualize - Display data in manner most appropriate to nature of story/format of information.

Now, let's visualize a dataset!