What is data visualization?
Data visualization is representing information using visuals such as charts, graphs, maps, infographics and dashboards. 📊
Simply put, data visualization illustrates information and helps people make better decisions.
Data visualizations could be static, animated or even real-time dashboards and web apps. There are several tools available for data visualization and analysis such as Tableau, Chartblocks, D3.js, Google Charts, Chart.js, ggplot2, R Shiny, CARTO and more.
Why is data visualization important?
Studies have shown that the human brain can process massive volumes of data more easily through visuals rather than text—as most people themselves will tell you.
Humans can process pre-attentive attributes such as line length, shape and color easily, as compared to reading numbers. Data visualization takes advantage of pre-attentive attributes to grab the attention of the viewers and engages them by letting them interact with data.
Good visualizations also help you understand whether you're asking the right questions or whether you need more data to answer your questions.
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