Introduction to

Data Visualisation
Lecture 8
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Copyright © 2020, 2015, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2020, Packt Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved 1
 Learning Objectives
✓ Understand the importance of data/information visualisation
✓ Learn different types of visualisation technique
✓ Appreciate the value that visual analytics brings to business analytics
✓ Know the capabilities and limitations of different plots
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 What is Data & Information Visualisation?
“The use of visual representations to explore, make sense of, and communicate data.”
● Converting raw data to a form that is viewable and understandable to humans
● Information = aggregation, summarization, and contextualization of data
● Related to information graphics, scientific visualization, and statistical graphics
● Often includes charts, graphs, illustrations, …
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*Adapted from The ParaView Tutorial, Moreland

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Copyright © 2020, 2015, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved
 Data VS Information Visualisation

Data visualisation is a graphic representation that expresses the significance of data. It

reveals insights and patterns that are not immediately visible in the raw data. It is an art
through which information, numbers, and measurements can be made more understandable.

Information visualisation is the art of representing data so that it is easy to understand and
manipulate, thus making the information useful. Visualisation can make sense of information
by helping to find relationships in the data and support (or disproving) ideas about the data.
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 Why data visualisation is such a powerful tool?
✓ Intuitive: Presenting a graph as a node-link structure instantly makes sense, even to people who
have never worked with graphs before.

✓ Fast: It is fast because our brains are great at identifying patterns, but only when data is presented
in a tangible format. Armed with visualisation, we can spot trends and outliers very effectively.

✓ Flexible: The world is densely connected, so as long as there is an interesting relationship in your
data somewhere, you will find value in graph visualisation.

✓ Insightful: Exploring graph data interactively allows users to gain more in-depth knowledge,
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understand the context and ask more questions, compared to static visualisation or raw data.
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 Implications of Good Data Visualization
Principle Description
People can process and remember images quicker than words. When data
1. Easy Recall is transformed into images, the readability and cognition of the content
greatly improves.

Providing You can pack a lot of information into a small space. Colors, shape,
2. Window for movement, the contrast in scale and weight, and even sound can be used to
Perspective denote different aspects of the data allowing for multi-layered understanding.

Color, shape, sounds, and size can make evident relationships within data
Enable
very intuitive. When data points are represented as images or components
3. Qualitative
of an entire scene, readers are able to see the correlation and analytical
Analysis
insights can be easily derived.

Increase in Interactive infographics can substantially increase the amount of time

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4. User someone will spend with the content and the degree to which they
Participation participate in the information, both in its collection and its dissemination.
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 A Brief History
● Data visualization can date back to the second century AD
● Most developments have occurred in the last two and a half centuries
● Until recently it was not recognized as a discipline
● Today’s most popular visual forms date back a few centuries

Area Bar Dot Image

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Line Label Rule Wedge

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 The First Pie Chart Created by William Playfair in 1801
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William Playfair is widely credited as the inventor of the modern chart, having created the first line and pie charts.
Copyright © 2020, 2015, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved 8
 Decimation of Napoleon’s Army During the 1812
Russian Campaign

By Charles Joseph Minard

● Arguably the most popular multi-dimensional chart

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Copyright © 2020, 2015, 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. All Rights Reserved 9
 Visual Analytics for Industry
➢ A recently coined term
➢ Information visualisation + predictive analytics
➢ Information visualisation
➢ Descriptive, backward focused
➢ “what happened” “what is happening”
➢ Predictive analytics
➢ Predictive, future focused
➢ “what will happen” “why will it happen”
➢ There is a strong move toward visual analytics
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 Visual Analytics by SAS Institute
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 Visual Analytics by TABLEAU FREE to students and teachers with .edu email
https://www.tableau.com/academic/teaching
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 Visual Analytics by POWER BI
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 Four questions to ask before
Data Visualisation
● 1. What data is important to show?
● 2. What do I want to emphasize in the data?
● 3. What options do I have for displaying this data?
● 4. Which option is most effective in communicating the data?
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 Which Chart or Graph Should You Use?
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 Part-To-
Time Series Ranking Deviation
Whole

Distribution Correlation Comparison

What do you want to show with your data?

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 Time series
values display how something changed over time

Strip Plot (multiple)

Only when also featuring

distributions

Bar Graph (vertical) Line Graph Dot Plot (vertical)

To feature individual values To feature overall trends and When you do not have a
and support their patterns and support their value for every interval of
comparisons. Quantitative comparisons time
scale must begin at zero.
Box Plot (vertical)
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Boxplots to Show Variation

 ranking
values are ordered by size (descending or ascending)

Dot Plots
Bar Graphs
Quantitative scale must begin at zero
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Bar graphs show Frequency for a categorical variable

 Part-to-whole
values represent parts (ratios) of a whole

Bar Graphs
Quantitative scale must begin at zero
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 What about pie charts?
● Commonly used to show parts of a whole
● However…
➢ Hard to judge relative size of pie slices – better at differentiating length

➢ Take up a lot of space to present little information

➢ Require labels and good color contrast to even be usable (often difficult)
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Best use is when one overwhelmingly larger value

than the rest – no need to focus on actual values
 deviation
difference between two sets of values

Bar Graphs Line Graph

Quantitative scale must being at zero Only when also featuring time series
or single distribution
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 Distribution
count of values per interval along quantitative scale

Strip Plot (multiple)

Strip Plot (single) When comparing
When you want to see each multiple distributions
value AND you want to see
each value
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Box Plots
When Comparing Multiple Distributions
Histograms show Frequency for a continuous variable
 Correlation
Comparison of two paired sets of values to determine
if there is a relationship between them

Scatterplots Show Relationships

Scatter Plot
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 Normal comparison
simple comparison of values for a set of ordered
items
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 Visualisation Components
● Color
● Size
● Texture
● Proximity
● Annotation
● Interactivity
○ Selection / Filtering
○ Zoom
○ Animation
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 Visualisation Pipeline
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 Visualisation Workflow
● Acquire
● Parse
● Filter
● Mine
● Represent
● Refine
● Interact
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 Visualisation Workflow
● Acquire
● Parse
● Filter
● Mine
● Represent
● Refine
● Interact
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 Visualisation Workflow
● Acquire
● Parse
● Filter
● Mine
● Represent
● Refine
● Interact
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 Practices
1. Which type of data visualisation shown
in the chart/ graph?

2. How do you describe the data shown

in this visualisation?

3. Is this chart/ graph suitable for this set

of data?

4. Bar graph and histogram looks the

same. How do you differentiate them?
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