A short intro to Data Visualization

Michael Bauer @mihi_tr

Why?

• Communication
• Exploration

What are we showing?

Why are we showing it?

To whom are we showing it?

Colours

• Use One!
• Highlight what is important
• If you have more than one: The color has to be additional information
• Avoid Red/Green contrasts
• Use Colorbrewer!

The problem with Bubbles

The problem with Bubbles

The problem with Bubbles

A word on Pie Charts

A word on Pie Charts

• Avoid
• Only if you show parts of a whole
• Only with less than 5 categories

Source dark horse analytics

Examples of good (and less good) dataviz

• Combining line and Barcharts
• OECD Better life Index
• Olympic Symphony - using sound to show differences in time
• WP Olympics for the rich - flowing bubbles
• Where does my Money go - Bubble-Map

Visualization Tools

• datawrapper
• infogram
• RAW
• SVG Crowbar

Resources

• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Edward R. Tufte(Amazon)
• The Functional Art Alberto Cairo (Amazon)
• The Data Journalism Handbook J. Gray, L. Chambers, L. Bonnegru (ed.) (Web) (Amazon)
• Visualising Information for Advocacy Tactical Tech (Web)
• Scraping for Journalists Paul Bradshaw(Leanpub)