September 2011
Beginner to intermediate
114 pages
2h 51m
English
Content preview from Designing Data VisualizationsBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Part I. What Will You Design?
Since you are interested in learning more about designing data visualizations (by virtue of the fact that you’re reading this book), then chances are good that you have been the reader of other people’s data visualizations. You may already understand—intuitively or consciously—some of the visual techniques that work well, and some that don’t. You may also be aware of some of the different categories of visualization.
The first part of this book aims to help you build your understanding of these categories and techniques. We will explain how to recognize and think about them, so that you will be better prepared to discuss, plan, and consume all kinds of data visualizations.
Why Visualization?
Before we dive into the categories, however, it may be useful to pause for a moment and be explicit about why visualization is a useful medium for examining, understanding, and transmitting information.
Visualization leverages the incredible capabilities and bandwidth of the visual system to move a huge amount of information into the brain very quickly.
Visualization takes advantage of our brains’ built-in “software” to identify patterns and communicate relationships and meaning.
Visualization can inspire new questions and further exploration.
Visualization helps identify sub-problems.
Visualization is really good for identifying trends and outliers, discovering or searching for interesting or specific data points in a larger field, etc.
The key function of data visualization ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.