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Digital Scholarship Centre

If you are interested in incorporating digital methods in your research, the DSC is your one-stop-shop to the many resources available at the University

What is data visualisation?

We create a lot of data. It is estimated that 59 zettabytes were produced in 2020 alone. do you know what a zettabyte looks like? Cisco created the following visualisation of a zettabyte:

The visualisation definitely makes it easier to understand how large a petabyte of data is. And that's the power of data visualisation.

Data visualisation is about presenting data in a visual format to tell a meaningful story. It is a graphical representation of information and data that allow you to quickly see trends and outliers, visualise patterns and relationships, and easily share information. It is storytelling with a purpose.

More about data visualisation

General types of visualisations are:

  • Charts present information in a tabular, graphical form with data displayed along two axes. It can be in the form of a graph, diagram, or map.
  • Tables are sets of figures displayed in rows and columns.
  • Graphs are diagrams of points, lines, segments, curves, or areas that represent certain variables in comparison to each other, usually along two axes at a right angle.
  • Geospatial visualisations how data in map form using different shapes and colours to show the relationship between pieces of data and specific locations.
  • Infographics are combinations of visuals and words that represent data and usually use charts or diagrams.
  • Dashboards are collections of visualisations and data displayed in one place to help with analysing and presenting data.

More specific types of visualisations are:

  • Area maps is a form of geospatial visualisation and are used to show specific values set over a map of a country or other geographic location.
  • Bar charts represent numerical values compared to each other. The length of the bars represent the value of each variable.
  • Box-and-whisker plots shows the range of values along with the average and interquartile ranges.
  • Bullet graphs takes a bar chart and adds additional elements to create a compact way to analyse performance against a goal or threshold.
  • Gannt charts are typically used in project management.  These charts are bar charts depicting timelines or tasks.
  • Heat maps use colour and size to show the values of a measure. It doesn't need to be temperatures!
  • Highlight tables use colour to categorise similar data to make reading it more intuitive.
  • Histograms are a type of bar chart that split a continuous measure into different bins to help analyse the distribution.
  • Line charts are best used to show trends across time intervals. Multiple lines can be used to compare categories within a dimension.
  • Packed bubble charts use size as the primary visual element to allow for comparison between categories.
  • Pie charts are circular charts that shows data as a percentage of the whole.
  • Scatterplots are used to explore the correlation between two measures with independent axes.
  • Text tables present individual values in rows and columns and mostly used for description or summary.
  • Treemaps are a type of chart that shows different, related values in the form of rectangles nested together.

Want to capture a trend? Use these visualisations:

  • Line chart (to capture a numeric variable changing over time)
  • Multi-line chart (to capture multiple numeric variables over time)
  • Area chart (to show how a numeric value progresses by shading the area between line and the x-axis)
  • Stacked area chart (to track the breakdown of a numeric value by subgroups)
  • Spline chart (a smoothened version of a line chart)

Want to visualise relationships? Use these visualisations:

  • Bar chart (for the quick comparison of categorical data)
  • Column chart (for short labels, date ranges, or negatives in values)
  • Scatter plot (for observing the relationship between two variables and useful for potential correlations between data points)
  • Connected scatterplot (a scatterplot and line plot combined)
  • Bubble charts (for visualising data points with 3 dimensions, showing relations between data points using location and size)
  • World cloud chart (for visualising the most prevalent words that appear in a text)

Part-to-whole visualisations allow you to show sub-categories within a larger category:

  • Pie chart (for showing parts to the whole data and percentages)
  • Donut pie chart (for showing parts to the whole data and percentages, but with a hole in the center)
  • Heat maps (for representing data trends using colour shading)
  • Stacked column chart (for comparing subcategories with categorical data, or to compare percentages)
  • Treemap charts (for displaying hierarchically structured data with 2D rectangles whose size is proportional to the value being measured)

These data visualisations allow you to visualise a single data point/value:

  • Card (for showing and tracking KPIs in dashboards or presentations)
  • Table chart (for small datasets displaying tabular data in a table)
  • Gauge chart (for showing relevant KPIs)

Want to capture distributions? Use these visualisations:

  • Histograms (for the distribution of a variable)
  • Box plot (for the distribution of a variable using 5 key summary statistics: minimum, first quartile, median, third quartile, and maximum)
  • Violin plot (for the full distribution of data alongside summary statistics)
  • Density plot (for the distribution shape of data)

These visualisations allow you to visualise flow:

  • Sankey chart (for flows in systems)
  • Chord chart (for weighted relationships or flows between nodes)
  • Network chart (for relationships)

Where to find visualisations

Here are some places to look for data visualisations:

[OC] The Deadliest Hunters On Land from r/dataisbeautiful

The beauty of data visualisation

Take a look at this video on data visualisation, where David McCandless, the presenter of this TED Talk, illustrates how using visualisation of information allows us to see patterns and connections that matter, and allows us to focus on the information that's important for us.

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