Aug 20, 2015
When to use data visualizations and what kind of data?
What works? What doesn't?
WHY
Data Visualizations
Which data to Visualize
• Numerical data • Non-numerical data
Also• Discrete data (is counted)• Continuous data (is measured)
Discrete Data
Contains certain values.
ExampleThe number of students in a class
(you can't have half a student)
Discrete data - still
• Number of children in a household• Number of languages a person speaks• Number of people sleeping in Parliament
Continuous data
• Time to complete a task• Height• Time to wake up in the morning• Speed of the train• Temperature
What to do with this data?
What works? Graphical representation forms
• Graphs: Scatter graph, bar, chart, line, picture etc
• Histograms• Tag clouds• Cartography – Designing Maps• Infographics
Scatter Graphs
Bar Graph
Picture or symbols GraphNumber of pupils in Mbale going to School
Primary SchoolPre-school
University Post-grad
Number of books read by Paul in the school library
Maps
Designing Maps
Histograms
Tag Clouds
Interactive Visualisations
Infographics
Pattern, Story, Graphics
References - LinksVisualizing.org - http://www.visualizing.org
Visage - http://www.visage.co
Flowing Data - http://flowingdata.com
Information is beautiful - http://www.informationisbeautiful.net
Google Charts - http://code.google.com/apis/chart/
d3.js - Data-Driven Documents - http://d3js.org/
Ushahidi - http://www.ushahidi.com