4 Simple Ways to Visualise your Data

By Manushi Kaur

Image credit: WIRED data visualisation illustrations

Data-Visualisation plays a vital role in data analysis — it connects insights to action. Data-Visualisation helps in providing information from data in the most effective ways and it can be applied in any domain. It is the most important skill required for all business intelligence professionals.

What is Data-Visualisation?

Data-Visualization is graphical representation of information/data using either charts, graphs or maps etc. Data-Visualization tools helps us to visualise and understand patterns, trends and outliers in our data. It helps us to analyse huge amounts of data and make data-driven decisions for our business. In short it’s storytelling with a purpose.

Identify the Right Visualisation Type

A great dashboard requires a certain amount of strategic planning and design thinking. First we need to understand the requirements clearly and then start searching the data. Once you have the data & gathered the requirements, you need to identify the right visualisation type that helps to get the right insights from data which helps in making right business decision by stakeholders.

Let us have a look at the chart types that can be used for analysing a trend over a time period.

Analysing Trends over a time period

Looking at the change in data over a period of time helps in identifying the patterns/trends and then we can deep dive to understand the root cause of these trends.

Picking the wrong visualisation type for data can lead to misleading results and hence, choosing the right chart type is very critical.

Below are the examples of visualisation types used at AirAsia:

1. Line Chart
2. Stacked Bar Chart
3. Area Chart
4. Candlestick/Stock Chart

Let us understand the pros & cons of each chart type.

Line Chart

They are used to present the changes that happened over a period of time. Below is an example of a line chart:

This example shows number of users visiting AirAsia website from different devices on daily basis. Line charts can also be used for comparing multiple datasets.

Pros:

• Used to represent continuous data, such as change over a period of time
• Extrapolation of data can be done using this chart
• A line chart constructed from multiple data points allows us to identify the missing data
• Helps in comparison of two or more items to identify if there is any connection or relationship between data points

Cons:

• Difficult to determine exact values from the graph
• Too many lines or two lines that have similar values, can make it difficult to compare data

Stacked Bar Charts

Stacked Bar charts are used to represent change in data over time.

Below example shows journey type & revenue we make from each journey type.

Pros:

• Frequency distribution of each data category can be visualised
• Proportions of multiple categories can be seen
• Summarises large datasets
• Trends can be better visualised as compared to tables
• Allows a visual check of the accuracy

Cons:

• Difficult to identify any key assumptions in data
• Not easy to interpret causes, effects or patterns

Area Chart

An area chart presents data series plotted using lines with a filled area below. Area charts are used to show change in one data series over a period of time. They are easy to interpret at a glance.

Below example shows number of users visiting AirAsia homepage via different platforms/devices.

Pros

• Simple & easy to read and create
• Shows trends over a period of time
• Can present positive and negative values

Cons

• Can not be used with multiple data series
• As compared to bar or column chart, it can imply more data than actually available

Candlestick/Stock Chart

Candlestick or Stock chart and is used to measure variation in price and describe price movements every day.

Black line represents the price range from high to low and the body represents the area that helps to compute the difference between the first and the last price of a product on a given day.

Conclusion:

Identifying trends in data over a time period is easier when the right chart type is selected. Line chart, Area Chart & Stacked Bar Chart are commonly used to show trends over time whereas a Candlestick or a Stock chart is used to compare the price variation on a daily basis.