Data visualization is the graphic representation of data. It involves producing visual elements that highlight relationships among the represented data. Selecting properties of graphic marks, such as size or color, to signify data features is essential for producing useful visualizations. A chart or graph is a graphical representation of data.

Motivation

The main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively. There are many different types of graphs and charts, but we’ll focus on a few that can be used for lots of applications, including heatmaps, scatterplots, bar charts, maps and dashboards.

Visualization Tools

There are many visualization products, including open source ones that often integrate with programming languages, for example:

• Plotly
• D3

There are also many standalone commercial software products, for example:

• Tableau
• Qlik
• Microsoft Power BI

We’ll use Excel, which is not designed specifically for visualization, but has visualization capabilities. We’ll also use Tableau, but other commercial products offer similar capabilities.

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