Visualize This, 2nd Edition

Ch.1Telling Stories with Data

Think of the data visualization works that you enjoy—the ones that you see online, that appear in lectures, and that you associate with quality. Most likely the works that popped into your head tell an interesting story. Maybe the story was to convince you of something. Maybe it was to compel you to action, enlighten you with new information, or force you to question your assumptions. Maybe it made you smile. Whatever it is, the best data visualization, big or small, for art or a slide presentation, shows patterns that you could not see otherwise.

MORE THAN NUMBERS

My interest in visualization began as a new statistics student ready to analyze all the datasets. Charts were a tool I could use to understand data better, and I would occasionally export an image to stick in a report. That was about it.

I approached chart-making from a technical point of view, without giving much thought to what type of chart worked best, who was going to look at my work, or how to design around insight and story. I just needed to figure out how to make a chart so that I could move on to the rest of my analysis.

However, the more I worked with data, the more I learned about its complexity, subjectivity, and how it related to the rest of the world. At the same time, we were interacting with data more through computers, phones, and connected devices. Data intertwined with the everyday instead of with just a spreadsheet that analysts opened at work, and I grew interested ...