Where have you seen data visualizations?

What is data visualization?

The visual representation and presentation of data to facilitate understanding.

Andy Kirk

What is data visualization?

The visual representation and presentation of data to facilitate understanding.

Andy Kirk

What is data visualization?

The visual representation and presentation of data to facilitate understanding.

Andy Kirk-

• How you are going to plot your data

• Building blocks of charts

  • marks: points, lines or shapes to represent data

  • attributes: visual variations of marks: different scales, positions, sizes

What is data visualization?

The visual representation and presentation of data to facilitate understanding.

Andy Kirk-

• Design decisions as a means for communicating to others

  • application of interactivity

  • features of annotations

  • legend, titles, scales, caption

  • dimentions of the chart area

What is data visualization?

The visual representation and presentation of data to facilitate understanding.

Andy Kirk-

The three phases of understanding

Perceiving --> Interpreting --> Comprehending

• Three different cognitive focuses.

Perceiving

• What do I see?: Reading the chart

  • What data is shown?

  • What is on x-axis/ y-axis?

  • What do colours represent?

  • What range of values are displayed?

  • stepped magnitude judgement?

  • Where are the least and most/ average?/largest and smallest?

Interpreting

• Translate what you see into quantitative and/or qualitative meaning.

• Reader's ability to perform relational interpretation

  • Are these patterns normal, expected or unusual?

  • What features are interesting?

  • What features are important given the subject knowledge?

  • If you do not have any knowledge about the subject your understanding stops after the perceiving phase.

Comprehending

• What does it mean to me?

• What does one do with this understanding?

• Have I learned something I did not know before?

• Was it confirmed I did not know before?

What is data visualization?

The visual representation and presentation of data to facilitate understanding.

• Visualisers can control the output but not the outcome.

Perceiving:

What does it show?

Interpreting

What does it mean?

Comprehending

What does it mean to me?

The Visualisation Design Process

• In visualisation there is no such thing as perfect solution.

Challenges

• Whether it will be understood as you wish

• Plots which are common in one kind of field may be unfamiliar to the readers of another research field.

• Choice of graphical form: The same data may be plotted in many alternative ways, which is best and why?

• May look different in print than on a computer screen.

• Other limitations: time, tools, demand of different audiences

Organising your thinking: What, for whom, why

• Stage 1: Formulating your brief

• Stage 2: Working with data

• Stage 3: Establishing your editorial thinking

• Stage 4: Developing the design solution

Stage1: Formulating your brief

• Planning:

  • What is the output format? (printout, mobile app, etc)

  • Audience (How much assisstant do they need?, How familiar are they with the charts?)

  • Time scale

  • Tools

Stage1: Formulating your brief (cont)

• Purpose:

  • Exhibitory

  • Explanatory

  • Exploratory

Exhibitory

Explanatory

Exploratory

Stage 2: Working with data

• Gathering, handling and preparing your data

• Qualitative vs Quantitative

• Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, Ratio

• Minimum, Maximum, Number of Categories

Stage 3: Establishing your editorial thinking

• What questions are you trying to answer in support of the overriding curiosity?

• Selecting items to include or exclude

Stage 4: Developing your design solution

• Scales

  • Simplicity

  • Granularity: relative size, scale, level of detail

  • Coverage

• Sorting and ordering

• Annotation (Overlaying information)

  • Highlight particular feature of a graphic

  • Guides the reader

  • Emphasizing particular issue

  • Overlaying (Statistical) information

  • Challenge: overlapping or cluttered display

Stage 4: Developing your design solution (cont.)

• Captions, legends

• Positioning/ layout: Same page or in the facing page, inconvenient to have to turn pages back and forth

• Size, Frames and Aspect Ratio

• Colour: Blends well and distinguish between different categories

• Consistency

• Proximity: place graphics on the same page or on the facing page

Three principles of good visualisation design (From Andy Kirk)

• Trustworthy: Is it reliable?

• Accessible Is it usable/ understandable?

• Elegant

US Adults Opinions on Climate Change Relevant Regulations

1. Require producing 20% of electricity from clean energy

2. Regulate $C{O}_2$ as a pollutant

3. Fund more research into renewable energy

Response: Strongly support (1), Somewhat support (2), Refused (3), Somewhat oppose (4), Strongly opposed (5)

Lab work

Visualising dengue data.

Visit dengue data hub at https://denguedatahub.netlify.app/

install.packages("denguedatahub)