Hands-On Data Visualization

Preface

This introductory book teaches you how to tell your story and show it with data using free and easy-to-learn tools on the web. You’ll discover how to design interactive charts and customized maps for your website, beginning with easy drag-and-drop tools, such as Google Sheets, Datawrapper, and Tableau Public. You’ll also gradually learn how to edit open source code templates like Chart.js, Highcharts, and Leaflet on GitHub. Follow along with the step-by-step tutorials, real-world examples, and online resources. This book is ideal for students, educators, community activists, nonprofit organizations, small business owners, local governments, journalists, researchers, or anyone who wants to tell their story and show the data. No coding experience is required.

Audience and Overview

As educators, we designed this book to be accessible for new learners, to introduce key concepts in data visualization and reinforce them with hands-on examples. We assume no prior knowledge other than a basic familiarity with computers and some vague memories of secondary school mathematics. Based on feedback we received from an earlier draft, many readers across the globe have taught themselves with this book, and others educators are already using it as a textbook to teach their students.

Our subtitle, “Interactive Storytelling from Spreadsheets to Code,” reflects how the scope of the book progresses from strengthening basic skills to editing open source code templates, while continually maintaining ...