Database Reference
In-Depth Information
4
The Art of Seeing Things:
Data Visualization
“
A picture is worth a thousand words.”
- Anonymous
“There is a magic in graphs. The profile of a curve reveals in a flash a whole situation -
the life history of an epidemic, a panic, or an era of prosperity. The curve informs the
mind, awakens the imagination, convinces.”
- Henry D. Hubbard, 1939
Much of our best analytical thinking is graphically-oriented. By conceptualizing and
rendering data in a visual manner, we make it easier for ourselves to detect, study, and under-
stand patterns within that data, thus enabling greater insight and facilitating greater creative
thinking about the data. Human perception and cognition thrive and are enhanced in such an
environment.
In the conduct of data visualization, Data Scientists use everything from the most simple
charts and graphs (such as have been found in scientific texts going back for centuries)
to two-dimensional vector graphics and even some images enhanced with animation and
viewer-interactivity. The Data Scientist also uses hierarchical layouts and networks (for
visualizing relationships) and - most importantly - tools for the visualization of databases
and data mining processes, especially the visualization of such unstructured data as are the
Data Scientist's stock and trade.
Noted information designer David McCandless tells us that “by visualizing information,
we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes, a sort of information map.
And when you're lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.” OK, so data
visualization creates a map. Good. More formally, data visualization can be described as:
“the abstraction of information in schematic form, including attributes or variables for the
units of information.”
