Data Storytelling through Visualization

Have you heard of the concept known as data storytelling through visualization? It's a powerful technique that leverages the ability of humans to quickly process and understand visual information, making it an essential tool in today's data-driven business world. Simply put, data storytelling through visualization is the practice of presenting data in a visually compelling, easily-digestible manner, allowing others to comprehend and engage with complex data easily.

Imagine you are running a startup that sells eco-friendly products. Your sales data consists of a wide array of numbers, from monthly sales figures to geographical locations and customer demographics. Instead of presenting this information in a dry spreadsheet, you create an interactive dashboard that features line graphs for the sales trends, colorful pie charts for customer segmentation, and a dynamic heat map to showcase the geographical impact of your products. This level of visualization allows you to highlight key insights and trends that would otherwise be lost or difficult to communicate in a traditional format, making data-driven decision-making that much easier.

How can you apply this concept to your business? Start by identifying the most important insights you want to share with your team or stakeholders. Then, choose the best visual representations to communicate these insights, and experiment with different methods such as infographics, dashboards, or even animated charts to find the most captivating and effective way to tell the story of your data.

An Introduction to Data Visualization and Data Analytics

Data visualization and data analytics are hot topics in business today. Why? Because visualizing and analyzing data not only helps you see patterns, but it also helps you understand what those patterns mean. In this blog post you will learn about why businesses use data visualization and data analytics, what differentiates a Data Visualization from an Analytics project and how to start working on your own projects with these tools.

‍

 What is Data Visualization?

Data visualization helps you gain insight into the data you have collected. Visualization can be done in several different ways: - Bar Charts - Visualize data with a bar chart. You can plot different values against each other and make trends more visible. - Bar Graphs - Visualize data with a bar graph. This type of graph is useful when you want to compare data values. - Pie Charts - Visualize data with a pie chart. This is a great chart type to use when you want to show percentages. - Line Charts - Visualize data with a line chart. You can plot different values against each other with this chart type and see trends become clearer. - Diagrams - Visualize data by using diagrams. You can create infographics with diagrams and create awareness among your audience.

 

Why use Data Analytics?

Analytics help you understand why people come to your site and what they do once they are there. This means you can create a better user experience and make better business decisions. You can use both qualitative and quantitative data to build your analytics projects. This can include data from websites where users have filled out forms, emails that you have sent, or surveys that you have asked your customers. Quantitative data can include things like how many times a certain page was viewed, how much time people spent on specific parts of the site, or what kinds of emails they responded to. Qualitative data is more difficult to quantify, but could include things like how satisfied a user is with the product, how much they liked a page, or how they feel about your company as a whole.

 

Differences between a Data Visualization and

an Analytics Project

Visualizations can be used to gain insight into your data, while analytics projects are used to understand why people are visiting your site, what they do once they are there, and what impact your company has on their lives. Visualizations don’t necessarily need to have a purpose of understanding your data, whereas analytics projects need to have a purpose of understanding the data. You can have both qualitative and quantitative data for your analytics projects. Visualizations can also have both qualitative and quantitative data, but the purpose of the visualization is to make the data more accessible. For example, you can have a diagram that shows how many visits to your site came from specific countries, cities, or IP addresses. While this is not necessarily used for analytics, it could help you see patterns in your data.

 

Tools to work on Data Visualization Projects

There are a lot of tools you can use to build data visualization projects. Some popular ones are: - Tableau - This software is great for doing data visualizations, business analytics, and data science. It’s also free to use. - Adobe Photoshop - This is a great tool for creating visual designs that go along with your data visualizations. - Microsoft Excel - This is still a popular tool for doing basic data analysis and plotting graphs. - Open Source Tools - There are many open source tools out there that you can use for building your projects. GitHub is a great place to find these.

 

Conclusion

Visualizing your data can help you gain insight into your data, see patterns and trends become clearer, and understand the impact your company has on your audience. There are many different types of data visualization projects, and each one has its own different purposes. If you’re interested in learning more about data visualization and data analytics, try starting with a project that doesn’t have a specific purpose. You can always switch up your project later once you learn more about data visualization and data analytics.

A Few of My Fractal Animations

Testing

Mind-Boggling Fractals has been around for 12 years! 

Developed by Paul W. Carlson. 

I've used it to create some amazingly beautiful designs. I love it.

My Pinterest Followers at 100+

English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My Pinterest site now has over 100 followers. That may not be much, but (1) it happened over just a few months and (2) I appreciate those 100+ followers more than they may realize.

I have a total of 21 boards, and the most popular boards are:
   Favorite Faces and Portraits (300+ pins) 
   Favorite Quotations (600+ pins) 
   Creatures Around Us (250 pins) 

 I have an Infographics and Data Visualization board with over 100 Pins.

I'm very impressed with the many Pinterest features.

The Battlespace of Online Piracy - Visual.ly

The Battlespace of Online Piracy infographic

This blog via Infomous

Paper.li and Data Visualization

Paper.li (Smallrivers) at Startup Finals, LeWeb10 (Photo credit: paulamarttila)

Paper.li is a content curation service. They are based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) - Innovation Center in Lausanne, Switzerland. 

I subscribe to over 10 data visualization and infographic newsletters via Paper.li. For three months, I reviewed each of them daily and used Twitter to retweet the top articles. 

I also publish my own daily newsletter:  Garry’s Gazette for DataViz


Following are the newsletters I'm subscribed to (in order of most viewers):

The #infographic Daily (Top News Spotters)Paper.li community 

The #DataViz DailyPaper.li community

The #infographics DailyPaper.li community

Opendata and Visualization (Top News Spotters)Pierre Crevosier

The Infographic ObserverMike Wirth

The Infographics and Mindmaps NewsOuti Lammi

The Visualization Magazine (Top News Spotters) (Innovation)Nelly Nellson

The Data Visualization DailyPaulDz - DataPic

The #visualization DailyPaper.li community

Data VisualizationMathieu Elie

Infographics! (Top News Spotters)Claudia Smalley

Insight on Research Daily (Top News Spotters)Duncan Malcolm 

The Datavis DailyBenjamin Wiederkehr

The Douglas Locke DailyDouglas Locke

Lolo's Infographics DigestLaurent Nicolas

Paper.li was a Red Herring Europe Top 100 Award winner for 2012. 

Mac vs. PC

Mitchell and Webb as PC and Mac (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Visual.ly has a Mac vs. PC infographic for business last July. Just a few items gleaned:

• Mac was 10% of market share
• Sales for Mac was over 5 times that of Windows
• Mac has 10 times more Youtube subscribers
• Mac has twice the Twitter followers

This Infographic is the result of a Social Media Innovation course through Temple University Fox School of Business.


Good work in showing significant data.

Fox Sports - Top News

Here's a data visualization of Fox Sports - Top News via Infomous:

U.S. Correctional Population (2000 & 2005-2010)

Image via Wikipedia

   


Little change over the last 10 years. 


According to 2010 statistics, there were 7.1 million of the U.S. population under supervision of adult correctional authorities. This represents about 3% of the adult U.S. population. 


For those under 18 years of age, 7,560 were in jail and 2,295 in prison.

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted; and a community is infinitely more brutalized by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurrence of crime." 

Oscar Wilde, Irish writer and poet (Oct. 16, 1854 - Nov. 30, 1900)

My Many-Eyes Data Visualizations via Infomous

Browser Trends Worldwide

Internet browser trends worldwide over the last year - thanks to StatCounter Global Stats:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

Infographic - Why Mobile Recruiting?

Here is one of many informative infographics found at Visual.ly. This one is particularly important because it indicates such radical trends.

via

Debt to GDP Ratio of Selected Countries

Many Eyes is very useful for showing trends. I often use their treemap for comparisons. 


On the above Treemap, quickly see that Italy's External Debt to GDP ratio (bright orange) increases 55% between July 2010 and July 2011.  China (bright blue) decreased 33%.

Selected Internet Users Worldwide

Data Cake - A Metaphor of Knowledge

Image by EpicGraphic

Competition for Data Visualization - The Winners!

Select this link to see The Winners and their Entries.


The data covers the ethnicity of students attending major UK universities.


Thanks to David McCandless and postgrad.com for sponsoring this data visualization competition.

California Prison Populations

The data visualization below shows the occupation rate of California's prisons in 2007. Many of the prisons were over 200% capacity. 

Today's Fox News about the U.S. Supreme Court decision indicates the problem of overcrowded California prisons hasn't been resolved.

Prison reform is a serious issue for the U.S.

Country Debt to GDP Ratios

I certainly don't understand the implications of external vs. public debt and ratios to GDP but the below data visualization via Many-eyes shows the following: 

• UK has an external debt ratio 5 times larger than its public debt ratio.
• Spain has an external debt ratio 3 times larger than its public debt ratio.
• Japan has a public debt ratio about 5 times more than its external debt ratio.

External debt (or foreign debt) is that part of the total debt in a country that is owed to creditors outside the country. 


Public debt (also known as government debt, national debt, sovereign debt) is money (or credit) owed by a central government.    

PokerBuddy - Poker Training at its Best

I haven’t been blogging regularly, and I blame it all on Texas Hold’em Poker. Until about 3 years ago, I rarely played poker and never played poker online. Then I started playing poker using Zynga Poker on Facebook and MySpace.   Being into data visualization, I was naturally inclined to keep weekly statistics.

I started playing with an open mind and wanting to learn. I was surprised with issues including gaming systems, cheating, breaking rules, violating regulations, collaboration, social relationships, team challenges, etc . I soon realized that my opponents would range from beginners like me to highly skilled poker players. Also included were moochers, cheaters, sociopaths and degenerates. Still, I was highly impressed with the potential lessons to be learned through poker. Strategy, competition, discipline, patience, logic and statistics were all part of this fascinating game.

Karen, a PokerBuddy Advisor

Just six months ago, I ran across PokerBuddy Pro in beta. It's a free downloadable poker application that provides real-time advice as you play.  I signed up immediately, and quickly became impressed with the many features and helpful tips. Color coding, video playback and a choice of advisors all became useful learning tools for me. Sometimes I had to upgrade with new versions two or three times within a few days, but I liked PokerBuddy's efforts and determination for new and better ideas. Using Get Satisfaction, they welcome and encourage feedback and quickly respond to suggestions.

Has PokerBuddy made me a better poker player? The data visualization below is via Many-eyes and shows my poker statistics of seven IDs for one year from May 2010 to April 2011. Midway on the graph (Oct. 19, 2010), the six-month time period begins when I started using PokerBuddy. My analysis isn't too scientific, but it definitely indicates to me the benefits of learning poker with PokerBuddy.

If you play Texas Holdem using Zynga Poker, you should give PokerBuddy a try. It’s free and works through Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo. It's a one-of-a-kind training tool in the form of a trusted buddy.


Last year, this TechCrunch article also featured PokerBuddy.