The Top 5 Key Data Visualization Techniques to Utilize Right Now
In a fast-paced digital culture with short attention spans and constant data streams, huge amounts of data are being created that make it possible to make mission-critical decisions in milliseconds.
Data visualization refers to the graphical representation of data using various graphics such as charts, plots, maps, graphs, and infographics. Data visualization makes it easier for human beings to understand the data by analyzing patterns and trends, which helps generate valuable business insights. Visualizing data can even help find important connections in charts and graphs that could be useful for businesses.
Data scientists regularly analyze, interpret, and visualize various large datasets with the help of multiple data visualization tools such as Tableau, Sisense, Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Excel, Looker, and Zoho Analytics.
Today, data visualization has applications in various fields such as healthcare, finance, marketing, data science, military, E-commerce, education, etc., as it helps in organizing the data in a way that is not possible through traditional techniques, and thus, it helps in fast data processing.
Benefits of Data Visualization
Data visualization is a graphical representation technique that helps us faster data processing and improves business decisions. Some of the benefits of data visualization are:
- Identifying Business Trends: Data visualization helps you analyze the trends prevailing in the market by visualizing the data of past years and understanding them. By preparing trend reports, you can figure out how business affects the market as well we can also gain an understanding of the competitors and customers.
- Simplification of Complex Data: Business data is often available in large chunks, and processing such data is always tricky. Data visualization simplifies the data and increases its usability by making it available in the form of graphics which can be processed by human brains faster.
- Faster Decision-Making: Visual presentation of data is always more accessible for human brains to process and interpret; thus, data visualization ultimately boosts the speed of business decision-making.
- Helps in Identifying Data Relationships and Dependencies: Analyzing various visual charts and graphs simultaneously helps the business identify different relationships and unobvious dependencies between the data and find links between related data.
- Identifying Errors and Risks: In many cases, visualized data helps the managers to gain a better understanding of the business as it removes the complexity of the data, and thus managers find it easier to identify any threat that can affect the business or the risks to which the business may be vulnerable and thus helps the business to prepare for such risks in advance.
The Three Different Types of Analysis for Data Visualization
Ø Univariate Analysis: Here, you use only a single feature to analyze all of its properties.
Ø Bivariate Analysis: The data to be visualized is compared between exactly two (BI) features.
Ø Multivariate Analysis: The data is compared on more than two variables in the Multivariate Analysis of data visualization.
Top Five Data Visualization Techniques
The top five data visualization techniques include;
1. Line chart
2. Histogram
3. Pie chart
4. Area plot
5. Scatter plot
1. Line Chart:
A line chart or line plot displays information as a series of data points connected by a straight line. A line chart displays any relationship between two variables on the respective X and Y-axis. It is most commonly used to compare several variables and analyze trends.
1. Histogram:
A histogram is the graphical representation of a set of numerical data in the form of rectangle blocks connected. A histogram represents only the quantitative data, unlike a bar chart. It determines any unusual observation or gap in the large dataset.
2. Pie Chart:
A pie chart represents the data in a circular statistical graphic form. It records data in the form of numbers, percentages, or degrees. It is the most common form of graphical representation used in business presentations to depict various data related to orders, sales, revenue, profit, loss, etc. Pie charts are divided into sectors that represent the percentage of the whole.
3. Area Plot:
An area plot is almost similar to a line chart or can be defined as a special form of a line chart where to highlight the distance between different variables, the region below the line is filled with a colour instead of just connecting the data with a continuous line. It helps to show the rise and fall of data, changes over time, categorical breakdowns, etc.
4. Scatter Plot:
A scatter plot is a graphical representation to observe and display the relationship between two variables. It uses dots to illustrate values for two different horizontal and vertical axis variables. Scatter plots are used to monitor the relationship between variables.
Conclusion
The human brain can process images and videos 60,000 times faster than text. Data visualization is an essential tool as it helps you analyze hidden patterns and relationships between variables through the graphical presentation of data. It is still an important tool and is a must-have skill for business persons, data scientists and data analysts to derive insights from complex business data. It’s my hope that this blog helps you improve your business visualization.
