Hands-On Data Visualization

Chapter 8. Table Your Data

You might be surprised that a data visualization book that emphasizes charts and maps also includes a chapter on creating tables. We don’t normally think about data tables as a type of visualization. But depending on your data and the story you wish to tell about it, sometimes a table is the most appropriate way to present information, especially when it’s an interactive table on the web. Tables make sense when readers want to look up a specific row of data that’s highly relevant to them, such as their local community or an organization they belong to, which can be too hard to identify inside a large chart or map. Also, tables work best when readers wish to precisely compare individual values with one another, but not necessarily to the rest of the dataset. Finally, tables work better than charts when there’s no broad visual pattern to emphasize, and work better than maps when there’s no particular spatial pattern. Before you start designing a chart or map, consider whether it makes more sense to create a table instead. Sometimes the best visualization is simply a good table.

In this chapter, you’ll learn about table design principles and how to use Datawrapper, a tool we introduced in Chapters 6 and 7, to create an interactive table with sparklines. Of course, if you need to quickly make a short table, then a static version usually makes sense, which you can create with a spreadsheet, as described in “Other Table-Making Tools”. This chapter focuses ...