A Glimpse of Data Visualization
Today we live in a world where technology holds a significant role in our life. For instance, a smartphone that we are carrying every day in our pocket, always connected to the internet. If we look closer at it, we might realize that our phones communicate to the internet by exchanging data or information. There is a lot of data scattered on the internet. Those data could worth a fortune, only if we know how to process and change it into something that easier for humans to understand. One of those process it’s called Data Visualization.
What is Data Visualization?
Let’s just assume that we have a large dataset filled with numbers and variables, and we need to extract some pieces of information from the dataset and make a summary out of it. It would take a considerable amount of time and effort just to observe the data itself. We could use a data visualization technique to help us. For short, data visualization is essentially a way of presenting those data or information, whether structured or not, by using visual representation so people could communicate and understand the data better.
Why is it Important?
The main reason why visualizing data is important is because people tend to understand the context of the data better and faster with the help of visual elements. Therefore, by applying data visualization, we could gain some advantages or benefits in data processing/analyzing. One example is that we could make a faster decision while making less to no mistakes. A significant time reduction in analyzing data is also an advantage usage of data visualization. Besides that, it is much easier to identify errors that we might miss without using data visualization.
Types of Data Visualizations
As previously mentioned, the data visualization method uses visual representation. In this case, there are lots of data visualization types. But here are the most frequently used by people:
- Charts
Charts are reasonably one of the most used graphical data representations. Charts usually split into different symbol representations, such as pie chart, bar chart, histogram, and line chart.
2. Tables
In a table representation, data is structured in rows and columns. The use of the table might be the most useful for tabular data.
3. Plots
Plots are a graphical representation by showing a relationship between two or more data variables. One of the most used plot graphs is a scatter plot.
4. Maps
As the name suggests, we could use maps as a means to represent data according to geographical location.
5. Infographics
6. Dashboard
It would be easier for us to think of the dashboard as a control panel. We could observe and track different types of key performance indicators that should be customizable according to needs.
You can also check various types of examples of data visualization below.
From the above section, we can mention that the use of data visualization is very convenient, especially for a data scientist/analyst who processes every day a large amount of data.
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