A Life-Long Learning Skill
As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Data visualization helps paint that picture, which in turn fosters greater understanding. Data visualization is the process of communicating and translating data and information in a visual context, usually employing a graph, chart, or other visual aid. Visualization also uses images to communicate the relationships between various sets of data. Our brains are wired to respond to visual stimuli and look for patterns in everything we see. Data visualization takes advantage of this human instinct and offers an easier way for people to see the information clearer and draw more accurate conclusions faster. This is a skill you hone at every opportunity you get to visualize data!
If you are new to this skill or if you wish to learn by doing, check this book:
Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posevac. And this short introduction about the project. Once you understand the premise of the book, it is important you practice. Discover the patterns in your everyday life in a journal. Harness your skills of observation. Teach yourself how to document the world through colors, lines, shapes, design, and data. Through the lens of data, encourage yourself to notice more closely the unfolding processes of both the world and yourself. Observe, Collect, Draw!
Can one come up with 100 ways to visualize 1 simple dataset? Here’s an inspiration: https://100.datavizproject.com/.
Not exactly data viz, but this site https://sketchplanations.com/ is an excellent peek into how it is possible to use visualisations to explain a idea or concept! https://pudding.cool/ is another place to see how visual essays can be created with data. Also check out https://growthlab.app/.
A work in progress interactive book worth checking out: https://dataxdesign.io/.
Here is another good reference: Visual Vocabulary. And another: https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/chart-types-guide.
Using Tools
If you are looking to enhance your Data Visualization superpowers, head to https://rawgraphs.io/. And explore all posts in: https://rawgraphs.io/learning. This is your opportunity to learn and go beyond bar charts and pie charts!
https://drawcharts.xyz/ and https://excalidraw.com/ are some more tools worth trying!
Practice
To practice creating good data visualizations, you need good data sets. Do you know most Governments and bodies like UN publish data they collect? Head right there, collect some interesting data sets and practice creating visualizations using rawgraphs.io!
- India – https://data.gov.in/
- USA – https://data.gov/
- https://ourworldindata.org/
- USA Census Data – https://data.census.gov/cedsci/
- EU – https://data.europa.eu/en
- World Bank – https://data.worldbank.org/
- World Health Org – https://www.who.int/data/gho/
- https://data.fivethirtyeight.com/
- https://www.dbpedia.org/
- https://www.kaggle.com/datasets
You can also check https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/ for some guidelines.
Another Reference
Check https://howisfelix.today/ – a fascinating visualization project done by Felix Krause since 2019 where he tracked over 100 different data types about his daily life, collecting ~380,000 data points over 3 years. The project aimed to answer questions like how different cities affect his fitness and happiness, how sleep impacts his day, and weather’s effect on his life. Some interesting insights include that he walked twice as much in NYC compared to other cities, his resting heart rate was lower when sleeping at his parents’ countryside home, and days with more than 4 alcoholic drinks made him 21x more likely to dance. He tracked everything from computer usage and location data to mood, fitness, and even Instagram stories using a custom database and Telegram bot. While the project provided valuable self-awareness, he concluded that building his own solution wasn’t worth the hundreds of hours invested, as the surprising insights were fewer than expected.
altLearners 