1.

Data Visualization:

Data visualization is a powerful way for people, especially data professionals, to display data so
that it can be interpreted easily. It helps tell a story with data, by turning spreadsheets of numbers
into stunning graphs and charts.

Data visualization is the representation of information and data using charts, graphs, maps, and
other visual tools. These visualizations allow us to easily understand any patterns, trends, or
outliers in a data set.

Data visualization also presents data to the general public or specific audiences without technical
knowledge in an accessible manner. For example, the health agency in a government might
provide a map of vaccinated regions.

The purpose of data visualization is to help drive informed decision-making and to add colorful
meaning to an otherwise bland database.

Benefits of data visualization

Data visualization can be used in many contexts in nearly every field, like public policy, finance,
marketing, retail, education, sports, history, and more. Here are the benefits of data visualization:

 Storytelling: People are drawn to colors and patterns in clothing, arts and culture,
architecture, and more. Data is no different—colors and patterns allow us to visualize the
story within the data.
 Accessibility: Information is shared in an accessible, easy-to-understand manner for a
variety of audiences.
 Visualize relationships: It’s easier to spot the relationships and patterns within a data set
when the information is presented in a graph or chart.
 Exploration: More accessible data means more opportunities to explore, collaborate,
and inform actionable decisions.
Tools for visualizing data

There are plenty of data visualization tools out there to suit your needs. Before
committing to one, consider researching whether you need an open-source site or could simply
create a graph using Excel or Google Charts. The following are common data visualization tools
that could suit your needs.

 Tableau
 Google Charts
 Dundas BI
 Power BI
 JupyteR
 Infogram
 ChartBlocks
 D3.js
 FusionCharts
 Grafana

Types of data visualization

Visualizing data can be as simple as a bar graph or scatter plot but becomes powerful when
analyzing, for example, the median age of the United States Congress vis-a-vis the median age
of Americans. Here are some common types of data visualizations:
 Table: A table is data displayed in rows and columns, which can be easily created in a
Word document or Excel spreadsheet.
 Chart or graph: Information is presented in tabular form with data displayed along an
x and y axis, usually with bars, points, or lines, to represent data in comparison. An
infographic is a special type of chart that combines visuals and words to illustrate the
data.
o Gantt chart: A Gantt chart is a bar chart that portrays a timeline and tasks
specifically used in project management.
o Pie chart: A pie chart divides data into percentages featured in “slices” of a pie, all
adding up to 100%.
 Geospatial visualization: Data is depicted in map form with shapes and colors that
illustrate the relationship between specific locations, such as a choropleth or heat map.
 Dashboard: Data and visualizations are displayed, usually for business purposes, to help
analysts understand and present data.
Data visualization examples

Using data visualization tools, different types of charts and graphs can be created to illustrate
important data. These are a few examples of data visualization in the real world:
 Data science: Data scientists and researchers have access to libraries using programming
languages or tools such as Python or R, which they use to understand and identify patterns in
data sets. Tools help these data professionals work more efficiently by coding research with
colors, plots, lines, and shapes.
 Marketing: Tracking data such as web traffic and social media analytics can help marketers
analyze how customers find their products and whether they are early adopters or more of a
laggard buyer. Charts and graphs can synthesize data for marketers and stakeholders to better
understand these trends.
 Finance: Investors and advisors focused on buying and selling stocks, bonds, dividends, and
other commodities will analyze the movement of prices over time to determine which are
worth purchasing for short- or long-term periods. Line graphs help financial analysts
visualize this data, toggling between months, years, and even decades.
 Health policy: Policymakers can use choropleth maps, which are divided by geographical
area (nations, states, continents) by colors. They can, for example, use these maps to
demonstrate the mortality rates of cancer or ebola in different parts of the world.

Jobs that use data visualization

From marketing to data analytics, data visualization is a skill that can be beneficial to many
industries. Building your skills in data visualization can help in the following jobs:

 Data visualization analyst: As a data visualization analyst (or specialist), you’d be

responsible for creating and editing visual content such as maps, charts, and infographics
from large data sets.

 Data visualization engineer: Data visualization engineers and developers are experts in
both maneuvering data with SQL, as well as assisting product teams in creating user-
friendly dashboards that enable storytelling.
  Data analyst: A data analyst collects, cleans, and interprets data sets to answer questions
or solve business problems.

Data is everywhere. In creative roles such as graphic designer, content strategist, or social media
specialist, data visualization expertise can help you solve challenging problems. You could create
dashboards to track analytics as an email marketer or make infographics as a communications
designer.

Foundations for building visualizations

When you first connect to a data source, such as the Superstore file, Tableau will display the
data connection and the fields in the data pane on the left sidebar. Fields can be dragged from
the data pane onto the canvas area or onto various shelves, such as Rows, Columns, Color,
or Size. We'll see that, placement of the fields will result in different encodings of the data, based
on the type of field.

Measures and dimensions

The fields from the data source are visible in the data pane and are divided into measures and
dimensions. The difference between measures and dimensions is a fundamental concept to
understand when using Tableau:

 Measures: Measures are values that are aggregated. That is, they can be summed,
averaged, and counted, or have a minimum or maximum.
 Dimensions: Dimensions are values that determine the level of detail at which measures
are aggregated. You can think of them as slicing the measures or creating groups into
which the measures fit. The combination of dimensions used in the view defines the
view's basic level of detail.
 4. What is Power BI?

Microsoft’s Power BI is a common business intelligence tool used by business analysts

and professionals. Learn more about this important tool today.

Microsoft Power BI is a data visualization platform used primarily for business intelligence
purposes. Designed to be used by business professionals with varying levels of data knowledge,
Power BI’s dashboard is capable of reporting and visualizing data in a wide range of different
styles, including graphs, maps, charts, scatter plots, and more. Power BI's "AI Insights"
functionality, meanwhile, uses artificial intelligence to find insights within data sets for users.

Power BI itself is composed of several interrelated applications: Power BI Desktop, Pro,

Premium, Mobile, Embedded, and Report Server. While some of these applications are free-to-
use, paid subscriptions to the pro and premium versions provide greater analytics capabilities.

Power BI is also a part of Microsoft’s Power Platform, which includes Power Apps, Power Pages,
Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents. Created as “low-code tools,” these applications help
businesses analyze and visualize data, design business solutions, automate processes, and create
no-code chatbots.

What is Power BI used for?

Whether you’re a data pro or are just entering the business world, Power BI is designed to
empower you with data-driven insights. Some of the most common uses for the platform include:
 Creating reports and dashboards that present data sets in multiple ways using visuals
 Connecting various data sources, such as Excel sheets, onsite data warehouses, and cloud-based
data storage, and then transforming them into business insights
 Turning data into a wide range of different visuals, including pie charts, decomposition trees,
gauge charts, KPIs, combo charts, bar and column charts, and ribbon charts – among many other
options
 Providing company-wide access to data, data visualization tools, and insights in order to create a
data-driven work culture
Who uses Power BI?

Power BI users aren’t limited to data professionals, such as data scientists or data engineers, and
can include a wide range of different business users. In fact, the platform is intentionally designed
so non-technical users can easily create reports, manipulate data, and perform in-depth data
analysis operations.

Nonetheless, some of the most common analyst positions that use the platform on a daily basis
include the following:
 Business analysts
 Business intelligence analysts
 Supply chain analysts
 Data analyst
Power BI in the real world

As data becomes more and more important to the daily functioning of the goods and services that
businesses provide, so too do business intelligence platforms capable of turning that data into
insights, reports, and interactive visualizations.

For example, a university attempting to optimize the efficiency of their buildings might set up a
system (like a digital twin) to collect real-time data on critical building systems. Afterward, they
might connect these data sources to Power BI and identify areas for improvement.

An advertising company, meanwhile, running a digital marketing campaign might monitor its
effectiveness by connecting various data sources to Power Bi and generating a dashboard that
highlights key figures. Here, marketers would be able to better understand what marketing
channels are best for reaching their target market.