Data Visualization and it’s techniques
Why visualization?
Without the concept of visualization, mining and analysis doesn’t play any role of
importance as data mining is the idea of finding inferences by analyzing
the data through patterns and those patterns can only be represented by
different visualization techniques.
Uses of data visualization
Powerful way to explore data with presentable results.
Primary use is the preprocessing portion of the data mining process.
Supports in data cleaning process by finding incorrect and missing values.
For variable derivation and selection means to determine which variable to
include and discarded in the analysis.
Also play role in combining categories as part of the data reduction
process.
Techniques:
Box plots
Histograms
Heat maps
Charts
Tree maps
Box plots:
A method for graphically depicting groups of numerical data through their quartiles. It
is a standardized way of displaying the distribution of data based on five features:
minimum -maximum value in the dataset
first quartile(25th percentile)- the middle number between the
smallest value and the median of the dataset
median- the middle value of dataset
third quartile(75th percentile)- the middle value between the median
and the highest value of the dataset
maximum- the maximum value in the dataset
Also the lower and upper quartiles are shown as horizontal lines of the rectangle. It
has vertical line inside to indicate the median value.
Histograms:
It is an accurate representation of the distribution of numerical data, it relates only
one variable. Includes bin or bucket- the range of values that is divide the entire
range of values into a series of intervals and then count how many values fall in to
each interval.
Bins are consecutive, non- overlapping intervals of a variable. As the adjacent bins
leave no gaps, the rectangles of histogram touch each other to indicate that the
original value is continuous.
Heat maps:
It is a graphical representation of data where the individual values contained in a
matrix are represented as colors. Useful for two purposes: for visualizing
correlation tables and for visualizing missing values in the data. In
both cases the information is conveyed in a two-dimensional table.
Note that heat maps are useful when examining a large number of
values, but they are not a replacement for more precise graphical display, such as
bar charts, because color differences cannot be perceived accurately.
Charts:
It gives a graphical representation of data has various types:
Bar charts-
It represents the categorical data with rectangular bars of heights and lengths
proportional to the values they they represent.
Line charts-
It is a type of chart which displays information as a series of data points called
markers connected by straight line segments.
Pie charts-
It is circular statistical graph which decide into slices to illustrate numerical
proportion. Here the arc length of each slide is proportional to the quantity it
represents.
Scatter charts-
It is a type of plot or mathematical diagram that display value for typically two
variables for a set of data using Cartesian coordinates.
Bubble charts-
It is a variation of scatter chart in which the data points are replaced with
bubbles, and an additional dimension of data is represented in the size
of the bubbles.
Time line charts-
It shows the chronological sequence of past or future events on a timescale.
Tree maps:
It is a method of displaying hierarchical data using nested
figures like rectangles. Has a tree like structure with each branch is
given a rectangle which then tiles with smaller rectangles
representing sub branches
A leaf node rectangle has an area proportional to specified dimension of the data.
Depending on choice leaf node is colored, sized or both according to chosen
attributes. They make efficient use of space, thus display thousands of items on the
screen simultaneously.
These are some of the ways by which we can represent our wide data for it’s better
understanding and interpretation.
