Introduction to Data Visualization
Explore the fundamentals of data visualization and understand how visualizing raw data through charts, graphs, and maps can reveal trends and patterns. This lesson helps you grasp why data visualization is essential across industries for decision-making, communication, and error detection before diving into D3.js techniques.
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Data visualization
Before starting D3.js formally, let’s learn a bit more about data visualization. Data visualization is when you take raw data and present it visually using graphs, charts, and maps. It enables humans to detect trends and patterns in large data sets without wasting time. Data visualization gives meaning to complicated datasets and helps businesses identify the areas that require improvement and attention.
General data visualization tools
- Charts
- Graphs
- Maps
- Tables
- Dashboards
Below is an example of a pie chart that shows the top programming languages to use in 2020.
Why visualize data?
So why do we want to visualize data?. In today’s age of big data, it is difficult to think of any industry that is not benefiting from the huge amount of data that is generated every day. From technical fields to governments, to education, marketing, and sports, everyone benefits from making huge amounts of data understandable through visualization.
Visualizing data has many benefits:
- It helps in making quick decisions.
- It helps in understanding market trends.
- It helps in communicating information quickly.
- It can help in finding errors in data.