Chapter 1 What is Visualization and Why Do We Visualize Data?

Visualization is the graphical representation of information and data. By using visual elements like charts, graphs, and maps, data visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data (“Data visualization beginner’s guide: a definition, examples, and learning resources” n.d.).

We visualize data to harness the incredible power of our visual system, to spot relantionships and trends. Imagine if you were given a table of sales data as below:
(Wexler 2017)

Would you be able to tell which quarters and category performed best?

Alternatively if we plot the same data into a line chart,

(Wexler 2017)

We can now see the sales trend by category for each quarter.

Here’s another example with a pie chart:

Another purpose of visualizing data is to help our memory. Human brains tend to remember images easier and longer than numbers in a table.

References

Wexler, Shaffer, S. 2017. The Big Book of Dashboards. Wiley.