Practical Applications of Visual Analytics

Practical Applications of

Visual Analytics

Dustin Smith

Tableau Software

We have been using tabular

representations of data for 4,000 years

We’re still using tabular

representations of data today

“The deep fundamental question in statistical analysis is Compared with what?”, Edward Tufte

Improved representation can transform reflecting

on data to experiencing it

The Key to Making Sense of Data is Visualization

Exploit the power of the

human visual system

70% 30%

Total Sense Receptors

Leverage the Human Perceptual System

Iterate, explore, and

experiment

Through an unpredictable and iterative process.

• Discovering structure;

• Finding patterns and outliers;

• Deriving causal relationships;

• etc.

How do people reason about data?

Cycle of Visual Analysis

Find the perfect view: People can intuitively explore a broad space of visualizations to find the “perfect” views that answer their questions.

Build visual literacy at their own pace: Start simple…and then slowly, over time, build up sophisticated views of their data

Perform rapid Q&A: Quickly layer new information into a view to answer new questions

Allow people to easily and incrementally change the data they are looking at and how they are looking at it.

Incremental

No single view answers every question.

Expressive

As people engage in Q&A with their data, they need to be able to change both:

• The data they are looking at, and

• How they are looking at that data.

versus

Query many times and then generate a summary graph.

Traditional Reporting Tools

Iteratively change the data and image to find the perfect view.

Visual Analysis Systems

Query once and then iterate on the presentation of the data.

Traditional Visualization Tools

Unified

The Cycle of Visual Analysis Leads to Monitoring,

Sharing and Storytelling

• Provide the flexibility to generate a wide range of images without encouraging poor design;

• Generate effective presentations of data by default.

What is effective?

Communicates all of the data

Communicates only the data

Leverages the human perceptual system

Is understandable

Is interpretable

Supporting Effective Presentation

Limiting the visual properties to a simple

and proven set

Great defaults

Automatic marks

Layout

Small multiples

Support for titling, captioning, &

annotation

Generate Effective Presentations of Data

“The Library of Congress has 18 terabytes of data. We do that every three days.”

David Stone Senior Manager – Analytics Platform

eBay

“More data beats better algorithms”

Anand Rajaraman Teaches Web Scale Data Mining

at Stanford University

1,048,576 Max rows in Excel 2010

Is that Big Data?

Big Data

Help people

their data see and understand

• Fastest growing business intelligence company

in the world

• Stanford Professor Pat Hanrahan and Dr. Chris Stolte

invented the visualization technology

• Founded in 2003 – currently on Version 7 of the software

• Headquartered in Seattle, WA

• 400 employees

Customers Include: • Apple

• Microsoft

• Wells Fargo

• Bank of America

• Walmart

• eBay

• Linked In

• Zynga

• Electronic Arts

• GM

• Dozens of Universities

• A number of Intelligence

Agencies

+ 1000’s more

Tableau Software, Inc.