CS2: Computer Science Level 2

Study Introduction to Data

Visualization
Session 7

Introduction to Data Preamble

Visualization Outline
Data visualization refers to the graphical representation of data by visual
 Data visualization
elements such as charts, infographics, and maps to understand the data.
 Before you visualize your
data There is a story behind every data, and data visualization brings them to
 Data visualization life. It enables decision-makers, stakeholders or your readers to see data
techniques
analytics presented visually, so they can grasp difficult concepts or
 Data visualization with
seaborn identify new patterns.
 Plotting continuous data
with seaborn
 Plotting categorical data Learning Outcomes of Study Unit 7
with seaborn
Upon completion of this study unit, you should be able to:
Study Session Duration
7.1 Work with the concept of storytelling through data visualization
This Study Session requires a
7.2 Visualize data with and Seaborn and Matplotlib package
minimum of 3 hours’ formal
study time. You may spend an
additional 2-3 hours on
revision.
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Terminologies, Acronyms and their Meaning

AI Artificial Intelligence NaN Not a Number

ML Machine Learning NULL Missing value

RL Reinforcement Learning Viz Visualization

DL Deep learning TF TensorFlow

EDA Exploratory Data Analysis os Operating system

Np Numpy pd Pandas

Plt Matplotlib sns Seaborn

7.0 Introduction
According to English Language adage, a picture is worth a thousand words. This means that
complex and sometimes multiple ideas can be conveyed by a single still image, which conveys its
meaning rather than a mere data analysis inform of ordinary tables or verbal descriptions.

In the other hand, data visualization provides an accessible way to see and understand trends
(upward or downward direction), outliers (extreme values), and patterns in data. Our eyes are
easily drawn to colours and pattern. Data visualization helps grab the readers' interest and keeps
their eyes on the message of the data.

The importance of Data Visualization is as follows:

It is a powerful way to explore data with presentable results

It displays the summary of our data at a glance

Charts and graphs make it easier to identify patterns and trends

It helps to identify areas that need attention or improvement.

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It can be hard for the audience to grasp the true meaning of the findings without data
visualization.

7.1 Before you visualize your data

Presentation of data and information is not just about picking any data visualization design.
Matching data to the right visualization begins by answering the following five (5) key questions:

1. What relationship am I trying to understand between my data sets?

2. Do I want to understand the distribution of data and look for outliers?
3. Am I looking to compare multiple values or looking to analyze a single value over time?
4. Am I interested in analyzing trends in my data sets?
5. Is this visualization an important part of my overarching data story?

With those questions (and your answers) in mind, we’ll dive into different visualization techniques
at which we can represent our data and data story to life.
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7.1.2 Data Visualization Techniques

In this section, you will learn about various data visualization techniques.

Name: Bar chart

Visual dimensions:
length/count
category
color

Description / Example usages

Presents categorical data with rectangular bars with heights or lengths proportional to the
values that they represent. The bars can be plotted vertically or horizontally.
A bar graph shows comparisons among discrete categories. One axis of the chart shows the
specific categories being compared, and the other axis represents a measured value.
Some bar graphs present bars clustered in groups of more than one, showing the values of more
than one measured variable. These clustered groups can be differentiated using colour.
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Name: Histogram
Visual dimensions:
bin limits
count/length
color

Description / Example usages

An approximate representation of the distribution of numerical data. Divide the entire range of
values into a series of intervals and then count how many values fall into each interval this is
called binning. The bins are usually specified as consecutive, non-overlapping intervals of a
variable. The bins (intervals) must be adjacent, and are often (but not required to be) of equal
size.
The height of the bar represents the number of penguins that lies within flipper length (mm)
respective bin (range).
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Name: Scatter plot

Visual dimensions:
x position
y position
shape
color
size

Description / Example usages

Uses Cartesian coordinates to display values for typically two variables for a set of data.
Points can be coded via color, shape and/or size to display additional variables.
Each point on the plot has an associated x and y term that determine its location on the
cartesian plane.
Scatter plots are often used to highlight correlation between variables (x and y).
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Name: Pie chart

Visual dimensions:

color

Description / Example usages

Represents one categorial variable which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical
proportion. In a pie chart, the arc length of each slice is proportional to the quantity it
represents.
For example, as shown in the graph above, the proportion of Penguins species.

Name: Box and Whisker Plot

Visual dimensions:

x axis
y axis
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Description / Example usages

A method for graphically depicting groups of numerical data through their quartiles.
Box plots may also have lines extending from the boxes (whiskers) indicating variability
outside the upper and lower quartiles.
Outliers may be plotted as individual points.
The two boxes graphed on top of each other represent the middle 50% of the data, with the
line separating the two boxes identifying the median data value and the top and bottom
edges of the boxes represent the 75th and 25th percentile data points respectively.
Shows the distribution of quantitative data in a way that facilitates comparisons across
levels of a categorical variable. For example, comparing the distribution of sepal length
among flower species (e.g. Carnation, Lily, and Rose).

Name: Line chart

Visual dimensions:
x position
y position
shape
color
size

Description / Example usages

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Represents information as a series of data points called 'markers' connected by straight

line segments.
Similar to a scatter plot except that the measurement points are ordered (typically by their
x-axis value) and joined with straight line segments.
Often used to visualize a trend in data over intervals of time – a time series – thus the line
is often drawn chronologically.

Summary

Source: Data Visualization Process, https://en.wikipedia.org

Additional resources
For more additional resources on data visualization, check the following resources:

https://www.klipfolio.com/resources/articles/what-is-data-visualization
https://www.import.io/post/what-is-data-visualization/
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7.1.3 Data Visualization

There are many tools/packages for data visualization in Python programming. Some of them are
as follows:

Matplotlib produces publication quality figures in a variety of hardcopy formats and

interactive environments across platforms; you can generate plots, histograms, bar charts,
line chart, scatterplots, etc., with just a few lines of code

Seaborn is a Python data visualization library based on matplotlib. It provides a high-level

interface for drawing attractive and informative statistical graphics.

Plotly generates the most interactive graphs; allows saving them offline and create very
rich web-based visualizations

Pandas also possesses its own data visualization functionalities based on Matplotlib.

In this course, we will consider using Seaborn and Pandas for data visualization. We will also
consider using some functions in matplotlib package, since Seaborn and Pandas based their
visualization on matplotlib.

7.1.4 Installation
The Anaconda distribution of Python comes with Matplotlib and Pandas pre-installed and no
further installation steps are necessary. Seaborn is not directly included but can easily be installed
with conda install seaborn or pip install seaborn. Open the Anaconda Prompt or your terminal
and run:

conda install seaborn

or

pip install seaborn

Once seaborn library is installed, we are ready to explore the capabilities.

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7.1.5 Import Packages

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

Using the code above, we have imported both Seaborn and Pandas. We assign both of these aliases
to make calling their methods easier. numpy is assigned the alias np, pandas is assigned the alias
pd, matplotlib.pyplot is assigned the alias plt, and seaborn is assigned the alias sns.

For our data visualization in this section, we shall use Food servers’ tips dataset.

7.1.6 Description of food servers’ tips dataset

This dataset is from a restaurant in Nairobi, Kenya where many come to eat food and after eating
based on a total bill they hate paid some tips. The following are the variables in the tips dataset:

total_bill: Cost of the meal in Kenya Shilling

tip: Gratuity in Kenya Shilling

gender: Sex of person paying for the meal

smoker: Whether they smoke in the party or not

day: Day of the week for the party

time: Time of the day whether for lunch or dinner

size: Size of the party

7.1.7 Load our data in a Pandas DataFrame

tips_data = pd.read_csv("datasets/tips.csv")

tips_data.head()
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tips_data.tail()

tips_data.columns

Index([‘total_bill’, ‘tip’, ‘gender’, ‘smoker’, ‘day’, ‘time’, ‘size’], dtype=‘object’)

tips_data.shape

(744, 7)

7.1.8 Fast data exploratory using Pandas Profiling

In the last section, we talk about Pandas Profiling. Let’s import and use pandas profiling before
we do some data visualization in this section. Remember we shall use .profile_report() attribute
on the DataFrame.

from pandas_profiling import ProfileReport

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tips_data.profile_report()
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7.1.9 Styles for Seaborn in Python

One of the benefits of Seaborn is that controlling aesthetics is much simpler than Matplotlib.

Seaborn has five built-in themes:

• Darkgrid
• Whitegrid
• Dark
• White
• Ticks

By default, Seaborn uses the darkgrid style.

Let’s apply the whitegrid style:

sns.set_style("whitegrid")

This piece of code tells Seaborn to use the whitegrid style.

7.2 Plotting continuous data with Seaborn

Scatterplot

Scatter plots are used to plot data points on the horizontal and vertical axis. It shows how much
one variable is affected by another. It shows the extent of correlation. It is also used to find the
relationship between two variables that are continuous.

To plot a scatter plot we use sns.relplot() function of seaborn library. It can be done by using:

sns.relplot(x='total_bill', y='tip', data = tips_data)

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You can use any variable to classify scatter plot. For this, there is a parameter called hue. You can
use hue as follows:

sns.relplot(x= 'total_bill', y='tip', hue='gender', data= tips_data)

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As you can see the scatter plot is classified based on sex by giving color to each point.

Important note

We can relabel our coordinates (x and y axis) and also give the plot a title by using matplolib
functions as follows:

For x-axis use plt.xlabel(“label to change to”)

For y-axis use plt.ylabel(“label to change to”)
For the title use plt.title(“Title of the chart”)
For example:

sns.relplot(x= 'total_bill', y='tip', hue='gender', data= tips_data)

plt.xlabel("Total bill for the meal")
plt.ylabel("Tips given in Kenya Shilling")
plt.title("tips vs total bill")
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Important note

We always use semi colon (;) at the last line of code to stop the texts written before the visual is
shown. For example:

sns.relplot(x= 'total_bill', y='tip', hue='gender', data= tips_data)

plt.xlabel("Total bill for the meal")

plt.ylabel("Tips given (in KES)")
plt.title("tips vs total bill");

Scatter and regression line

Seaborn makes this easy by using the lmplot() function. For example,

sns.lmplot(x= 'total_bill', y='tip', data= tips_data);

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You can remove the confidence interval in the regression line by setting ci = None in sns.lmplot()
function

sns.lmplot(x= 'total_bill', y='tip', data= tips_data, ci = None);

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Line chart
With some datasets, you may want to understand changes in one variable as a function of time,
in this situation, a good choice is to draw a line plot. In seaborn, this can be accomplished by
using sns.lineplot() function. For example, let’s import Nigeria monthly COVID-19 cases
dataset.

Nigeria_COVID19 = pd.read_csv("datasets/Nigeria monthly COVID-19 cases.csv")

sns.lineplot(data= Nigeria_COVID19, x = "month", y = "Total cases")
plt.xlabel("Month")
plt.ylabel("Total COVID-19 cases")
plt.title("COVID-19 in Nigeria");

Pair Plot

In the pair plot, one variable in the same data row is matched with the value of another variable.
That is, it combines or do permutation and combination of all the variables in the dataset. This plot
can only be a plot on numerical data. It can plot by using sns.pairplot() on the DataFrame:

sns.pairplot(tips_data);
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Join Plot

A join plot helps to learn about the relationship between 2 numeric variables. It is used to do
univariate analysis. It displays a correlation between two variables. You can plot a join plot as

sns.jointplot(x='total_bill', y='tip', data=tips_data)

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Correlation Matrices

We can plot correlation matrices by using a feature called heatmap. Heatmap helps us to find a
correlation (interrelation) between every continuous variable in our dataset.

The basic requirement for finding correlation is that the variable should be numeric (continuous)
i.e. data type must be int or float.

Correlation matrices cannot be found for categorical features because they are object (or string)
data type. Whenever you will find correlation matrices the value will be ranging from -1 to +1
which is Pearson correlation. Therefore, to find the correlation you can use:
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tips_data.corr()

As you can see, we are getting only 3 features because only these here are numerical and the rest
are categorical.

To visualize it for getting better understanding you can use

sns.heatmap(tips_data.corr());

Histogram Plot

Hist Plot helps to create histograms. To do that, we will use a function called as histplot(). It
creates a frequency distribution of continuous variables. It can be created by
using sns.histplot() on the variable of choice:
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# For histogram only use:

sns.histplot(x = tips_data['total_bill'], kde = False);

# For both histogram and density plot use:

sns.histplot(x = tips_data['total_bill'], kde = True);
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Box plot (box-and-whisker plot)

We can also show the distribution of a continuous variable using a box plot. The box plot shows
the quartile values of the distribution. Each value in the box plot corresponds to actual observation
in the data. It also shows outliers. You can plot boxplot as:

sns.boxplot(y = 'total_bill', data = tips_data);

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The distribution of total bill is symmetric i.e. it is not skewed. It looks like it is normally
distributed. The point above the upper whisker shows some extreme values (total bill that is
abnormal) known as outlier.

Important note
We can change orientation of any plot in seaborn either vertically or horizontally by changing the
position of x and y axis. For example:

sns.boxplot(x = 'tip', data = tips_data);

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7.2.1 Plotting categorical data with Seaborn

So, far we have visualized data which is specifically numerical i.e. int or float datatype. Now we
will try to visualize categorical data type. In our dataset, there are 4 categorical features and they
include day, gender, time, smoker.

Count Plot

It shows the counts of observations in each category using bars. This is different from histogram
because it has a gap (space) after every bar and the number of count (length of the bar) is
proportional to the number of categories in that variable.

sns.countplot(x = "day", data = tips_data);

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As you can see it plots the number of bars as there are categories in the variable. We can use
.value_counts() to confirm that.

tips_data["day"].value_counts()

Important note

We can order the bar in the right order of the week i.e. from Monday to Sunday using order
parameter
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sns.countplot(x = "day", order = ["Mon","Tues", "Wed", "Thur", "Fri", "Sat", "Sun"], data = tips
_data)
plt.xlabel("Day of the week")
plt.ylabel("Number of visitors");

As you can see, a lot of visitors came to the restaurant on Saturday when compare to other days of
the week

We can also compare day of the week and gender using the hue parameter as follows:

sns.countplot(x = "day", hue="gender", data = tips_data)

plt.xlabel("Day of the week")
plt.ylabel("Number of visitors");
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sns.countplot(x='gender', data=tips_data, hue='size');

For both male and female, the most common size of the party in the restaurant is 2.
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Bar Plot

Bar plot does the same work as count plot. But in this, we have to specify both x and y. Based on
one feature it will display other value.

sns.barplot(x = 'smoker' , y = 'total_bill', data = tips_data);

Those that smoke paid a slightly higher bill than those that did not smoke during their stay in the
restaurant.

Important note

You can remove the error bar by setting ci = None in the sns.barplot().

sns.barplot(x='smoker' , y='tip', ci = None, data=tips_data);

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Those that did not smoke give more tips than those that smoke

We can also compare smoker and time of the day using the hue parameter as follows:

sns.barplot(x = "smoker" , y= "tip", hue = "time", data=tips_data);

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It seems that people give more tips at the dinner than at the lunch time irrespective of whether they
smoke or not at the restaurant.

Pie Chart

A pie chart is a circular statistical graphic, which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical
proportion. Seaborn is not supporting pie chart currently. We will use .plot() attribute of Pandas
to do this.

tips_data["gender"].value_counts().plot(kind = "pie");
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To highlight a particular value in the plot, use explode parameter

# Explode 1st slice

tips_data["gender"].value_counts().plot(kind = "pie", explode = (0.05, 0));

To highlight the first and fourth value in the size of the party, use explode parameter and then put
a non-zero value to those positions

tips_data["size"].value_counts().plot(kind = "pie", explode = (0.05, 0, 0, 0.1 ,0 ,0))

plt.title("Size of the party")
plt.ylabel("");
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Box Plot

A box plot (or box-and-whisker plot) shows the distribution of quantitative data in a way that
facilitates comparisons between variables or across levels of a categorical variable.

sns.boxplot(x='smoker', y='total_bill', data=tips_data);

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Violin Plot

Violin plots take boxplots one step further by showing the kernel density distribution within each
category. You can plot violin plot as:

sns.violinplot(x='gender', y='total_bill', data= tips_data);

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7.2.2 Saving Plots in File

We can save or export the plot by using plt.savefig() function. First, we need to create our plot.
For example, visualize size of the party and then use plt.savefig() to export a plot as a PNG file
i.e. save it as size.png

sns.countplot(x = "size", data = tips_data)

plt.xlabel("Size of the party")

plt.ylabel("Number of attendees")

plt.savefig("size.png"
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Check your current working directory for size.png image

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Class activity 14 (Pilot question 2)

Visualization of the Africa COVID-19 dataset

1. Import the necessary libraries

2. Import the Africa COVID-19 dataset into your notebook. Note that this dataset
is in the activity_datasets directory. If you encounter UnicodeDecodeError set
encoding = “ISO-8859-1” in pd.read_csv().
3. Draw a bar plot of region on the x axis and total cases on the y axis?
4. Remove the error bar by setting ci = None
5. Which region had a greater number of COVID-19 cases?

Pilot answer 2
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

covid = pd.read_csv("activity_datasets/Africa COVID-19 Dec 6, 2020.csv", encoding = "ISO-88

59-1")

sns.barplot(y = "Region", x = "Total Cases", data = covid, ci = None);

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South Africa region had a greater number of COVID-19 cases

Class activity 15 (Pilot question 3)

Visualization of the Penguins dataset (Part 1)

1. Import the necessary libraries

2. Import penguins dataset. Note that this dataset is in the activity_datasets
directory.
3. Use the .describe() function to check the summary statistics on penguins DataFrame
4. Plot a boxplot for the bill_length_mm column by using sns.boxplot() function
5. Plot a histogram for the body_mass_g column

Pilot answer 3
Solution 1
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

Solution 2
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penguins = pd.read_csv("activity_datasets/penguins.csv")

Solution 3
penguins.describe()

Solution 4
sns.boxplot(x = "bill_length_mm", data = penguins);

or
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sns.boxplot(y = "bill_length_mm", data = penguins);

Solution 5
sns.distplot(penguins["body_mass_g"]);
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Class activity 16 (Pilot question 4)

Visualization of the Penguins dataset (Part 2)

1. Import the necessary libraries

2. Import penguins dataset. Note that this dataset is in the activity_datasets
directory.
3. Plot a boxplot with the x axis as species and the y axis as flipper_length_mm by using sns.boxplot()
function. Change the y-axis label to flipper length (mm)
4. Use the plot from 4. and change the order of the species to “Adelie”, “Chinstrap”, and “Gentoo”
5. In the above plot set hue as sex
6. Plot a scatter diagram with the x axis as bill_length_mm and y axis as flipper_length_mm by using
sns.scatter() function
7. Create a pairplot using sns.pairplot() on Penguins DataFrame

Pilot answer 4
Solution 1
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import seaborn as sns

Solution 2
penguins = pd.read_csv("activity_datasets/penguins.csv")

Solution 3
sns.boxplot(x = "species", y = "bill_length_mm", data = penguins)

plt.ylabel(“flipper length (mm)”);

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Solution 4
sns.boxplot(x = "species", y = "bill_length_mm", data = penguins, order = ["Adelie", "Chinstrap"
, "Gentoo"])
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Solution 5
sns.boxplot(x = "species", y = "bill_length_mm", data = penguins, order = ["Adelie", "Chinstrap
", "Gentoo"], hue = "sex");

Solution 6
sns.lmplot(x = "bill_length_mm", y = "flipper_length_mm", data = penguins, ci = None);
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Solution 7
sns.pairplot(penguins);
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Summary of Study Unit 7

In this study unit, you have learnt that:

1. Data visualization is the graphical representation of data by visual elements such as charts,
Infographics, and maps to understand the data
2. Before you visualize your dataset, you need to answer five (5) questions in section 4.1
3. We have different visualization designs or techniques such as bar chart, pie chart,
histogram, scatter diagram, etc.
4. Some visuals are good to represent categorical data e.g. bar chart while some are good for
continuous data e.g. histogram, scatter diagram, etc.
5. Scatter diagram is used to visualize the relationship between two continuous variables.

Additional resources
For more additional resources on data visualization, check the following resources:

https://datagy.io/python-seaborn/
http://bit.ly/Introduction-to-seaborn-YouTube-video
https://seaborn.pydata.org/tutorial/function_overview.html
https://seaborn.pydata.org/tutorial/relational.html
https://seaborn.pydata.org/tutorial/categorical.html