An Introduction to Data

Visualization
Or, Saying Good Research Things
Goodly

Martin Chandler
Data Services Librarian
[email protected]
This presentation:
• https://bit.ly/2PjpIRo
Agenda
• A little about “data”
• Defining “data visualization”, and “infographic”
• Principles of Data Visualization
• Good and Bad Visualization
• Process for Visualization
• Working with Data
• Citing Data
• Resources
Let’s start:
Background information:
• Data: facts, or information, used to answer a question or
make an argument
• This can include numbers, maps, words, images, sounds, or other
information – it all depends on the context.
• Dataset: A collection of facts, often gathered together to
be manipulated. Includes variables (aspects being
examined) and cases (each instance that contains an
aspect) Variable

Home ID Postal Code Dog Breed Temperament

001 M6R 1N6 0 N/A N/A

Case 002 L2S 2A7 1 Beagle Friendly

Dachshund;
003 B2R 1S2 2 Terrier Cute; Derpy
Background information:
• Data Visualization: Using graphic of pictorial
representations of data to explore, analyze, or
communicate.
• Scientific visualization: uses scientific data, generally with ties to
physical objects or phenomena
• Information visualization: generally involves visualizing more
abstract ideas and concepts
Scientific vs Information
Genetic profiles of breeds of dog: Part of the WWW in 2005:
Infographics
• According to Midori Nediger
(2019), “An infographic is a
collection of imagery, charts,
and minimal text that gives an
easy-to-understand overview
of a topic.”
Why Visualize?
• Visualizing helps to:
• analyze data
• find patterns in data
• make data understandable
• Should a graphic be used?
• Who is your audience?
• How much time do you have?
• Will a graphic help?
 Anscombe's quartet
I II III IV
x y x y x y x y
10.0 8.04 10.0 9.14 10.0 7.46 8.0 6.58
8.0 6.95 8.0 8.14 8.0 6.77 8.0 5.76
13.0 7.58 13.0 8.74 13.0 12.74 8.0 7.71
9.0 8.81 9.0 8.77 9.0 7.11 8.0 8.84
11.0 8.33 11.0 9.26 11.0 7.81 8.0 8.47
14.0 9.96 14.0 8.10 14.0 8.84 8.0 7.04
6.0 7.24 6.0 6.13 6.0 6.08 8.0 5.25
4.0 4.26 4.0 3.10 4.0 5.39 19.0 12.50
12.0 10.84 12.0 9.13 12.0 8.15 8.0 5.56
7.0 4.82 7.0 7.26 7.0 6.42 8.0 7.91
5.0 5.68 5.0 4.74 5.0 5.73 8.0 6.89
Principles of Data
Visualization
Or, being real
Simpler is better
• Which is easier to understand?
Make sure your data works
Some basic heuristics
• Bar chart: comparison of things (ex: cookie types)
• Line chart: trends with continuity, such as over time (ex:
number of cookies eaten/day)
• Heat map: showing tiers of quantities, especially over
space (ex: where I buy the most cookies from?)
• Scatter plot: show particular patterns
• Word cloud: good for showing usage of particular words in
text (ex: number of times “cookies” appears on this slide,
compared with other words) – similar to heat map
More about bar charts
• Use vertical for a few horizontal for several
Grouped bar chart
• To show 3 different
variables in one chart (but
don’t have to many groups,
or items in a group)
• Never ever include two
different variables on the
same axis.
Stacked Bar Charts
• (Almost) always bad: they
obscure trends/information/
comparison
Panel bar charts are better
Line charts
• Make sure your data is all related
• Start your Y axis from 0
• If you go negative, show 0
• Up should always increase,
down should decrease
• https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-conservative-2019-federal-election-1.5309670
Stacked line graph
• No.
Exception:
• http://research.google.com/bigpicture/music
Scatter plots
• Good if your data shows a particular pattern
• However, watch out for blobs
Pie charts
• Occasionally okay
• Use very few slices (max 7, and that’s pushing it)
• Label data
• Should generally avoid
U.S. Population by state:
If you really want a pie chart
• Can I interest you in a waffle chart?
Word cloud
• Not bad, if you’re working with a large corpus of text and
you can pull interesting things from it
• Remember that it has to show something worthwhile
Maps
• People love maps
• Only works if you have a geographic element in your data
• And it has to be a worthwhile geographic element (eg if
all of your cases have “Montreal”, yes, technically that’s a
geographic element, but it doesn’t give you anything
other than a map of Montreal)
Radar Charts
• No.
Process for visualization
1. Acquire data
2. Clean data
3. Ingest into tool to play with
4. Play with data
5. Keep playing with data
6. Try different things to make it look good
7. Show it to a friend (preferably one who doesn’t know
the topic). Do they get it?
8. Profit
Acquiring Data
• Prepared data?
• Geospatial: https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/gis_guides
• Numeric: https://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/data
• Other: ???
• Collected data?
• In a format that allows ingestion into a tool - .csv (like a
spreadsheet) is the most versatile, but not the only one
Cleaning Data
• Data can be messy
• E.g.: Say you have data about Montréal. Do you mean the
island? The city? The commune in Ardèche? The river in Ontario?
The river in Nunavut?
• Is it about the whole place, or just a part? If you only want a
particular section, is it a neighbourhood, or a postal code, or a
census area?
• Or maybe your data is numbers from a survey. Some people
wrote it as “10.2”, some as “9,5”, and some as “1,000.4”.
• Or maybe there’s just some extra information that could skew the
results…
Cleaning Data
Cleaning Data
• Did this cleaning
change anything? Not
really, in this case,
because I only used
the 25 most used words
to make this.
• Still, data must always
be cleaned. Small
things can throw the
whole thing off.
Some Visualization Tools
• PowerBI - General
• Tableau - General
• Raw - General
• Microsoft Excel
• Voyant - Text
• ArcGIS - Geographic
• QGIS - Geographic
• Stata - Statistics
• And many more!
• Make a copy of your
master file before you
do anything
• Then:
Play with Data
Let’s look at some software
• Power BI
• Tableau
• Voyant
• ArcGIS
Citing Data - Numeric
• Author or creator - name(s) of each individual or organizational entity responsible
for the creation of the dataset
• Date of publication - the year the dataset was published, posted or otherwise
released to the public
• Title or description - complete title of the dataset or if no title exists, you must
create a brief description of the data, including time period covered in the data
as well as edition or version number, if applicable
• Publisher and/or distributor - organizational entity that makes the dataset
available by archiving, producing, publishing, and/or distributing the dataset
• Electronic Location or Identifier - Web address or unique, persistent, global
identifier used to locate the dataset (such as a DOI). Append the date retrieved if
the title and locator are not specific to the exact instance of the data you used.
• (Sometimes) Format description e.g. data file, database, CD-ROM, computer
software

• http://libraryguides.mcgill.ca/datacitation
Citing Data - Geospatial
More dependent, but generally:
• Author or Data Producer
• Map Title or scene
• Edition
• Scale
• [Series, Sheet number]
• Place of publication: publisher
• Date
• https://acmla-
acacc.ca/docs/ACMLA_BestPracticesCitations.pdf
Most important:
• What are you trying to show?
• Is your visualization showing that?
• Is your visualization showing that well?
Some resources:
• https://library.duke.edu/data/data-visualization
• Steele, Julie, and Noah P. N Iliinsky. Beautiful Visualization :
[Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts]. 1st ed.,
O'Reilly, 2010.
https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/471816105
• Bertin, Jacques, and William J Berg. Semiology of Graphics
: Diagrams, Networks, Maps. 1st ed., ESRI Press, 2011.
https://mcgill.on.worldcat.org/oclc/656556106
Questions?
Martin Chandler
[email protected]
Sources
• Anscombe’s quartet. (n.d.). Retrieved 1 Oct 2019 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet
• Belvadi, M. (2017). Data Visualization for Libraries. Atlantic Provinces Library Association Conference 2017. Accessed 3 Oct 2019 from https://goo.gl/pZZwJ2.
• Byrne, D., and Cook, G. The Best American Infographics, 2013. Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
• Carman, T. (7 Oct, 2019). “Liberals step up attacks with 2 weeks left, but Conservative campaign most negative, data shows”. CBC News Online. Retrieved on 8 Oct, 2019
from https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-conservative-2019-federal-election-1.5309670
• Chan, C. (2014). Gun deaths in Florida. ThomsonReuters.com. Accessed 12 June 2019 from http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/14/02/US-FLORIDA0214.gif.
• Choosing the right chart: Selecting among 14 chart types. (n.d.) 365DataScience.com [website]. Accessed on 3 Oct 2019 from https://365datascience.com/chart-types-
and-how-to-select-the-right-one/
• Elections Canada. (2015). Federal Electoral Districts – Canada 2015. Natural Resources Canada: Ottawa. Accessed 3 Oct 2019 from
https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/737be5ea-27cf-48a3-91d6-e835f11834b0
• "File:Internet map 1024.jpg." Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. 20 Sep 2019, 20:09 UTC. Accessed 1 Oct 2019 from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Internet_map_1024.jpg&oldid=367359875.
• Kriebel, A. (2012). Stacked area chart vs. Line chart – The great debate. Vizwiz. Accessed 3 Oct 2019 from http://www.vizwiz.com/2012/10/stacked-area-chart-vs-line-chart-
great.html
• Lai, D. and Hacking, X. (2015). SAP BusinessObjects Dashboards 4.1 Cookbook. Accessed 3 Oct 2019 from
https://subscription.packtpub.com/book/big_data_and_business_intelligence/9781784391959/2/ch02lvl1sec28/using-a-radar-chart
• Montgomery, L. M. Anne of Green Gables [Ebook]. Project Gutenberg, 1992. Accessed 1 Oct 2019 from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45/45-0.txt
• Nediger, M. (2019). What is an Inforgraphic? Examples, Templates & Design Tips. Venngage. Accessed 1 Oct 2019 from https://venngage.com/blog/what-is-an-infographic/
• Quartiers de référence en habitation[computer file]. Montréal, QC: Ville de Montréal, 2019. Available: Portail Donées Ouvertes. Accessed on 3 Oct 2019 from
http://donnees.ville.montreal.qc.ca/dataset/quartiers.
• Schultz, K. (N.D.). Data Visualization: Getting Started. University of Toronto Map and Data Library. Accessed 1 Oct 2019 from https://mdl.library.utoronto.ca/dataviz/getting-
started
• Sinclair, S. and Rockwell, G. “Cirrus.” Voyant Tools. 2019. Web tool. Accessed 1 Oct 2019 from http://voyant-tools.org
• Statistics Canada. (2018). Making Time for Creative Activities. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 11-627-M. Ottawa, Ontario. Accessed 1 Oct 2019 from
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2018010-eng.htm
• SteveEqualsTrue. (n.d.). A Better Format For Excel Chart Secondary Axis Columns Overlap with 3 Series. ExcelDashboardTemplates.com (website). Accessed on 3 Oct 2019
from https://www.exceldashboardtemplates.com/better-format-excel-chart-secondary-axis-columns-overlap-3-series/
• Trimble, L. (2017). Finding Canadian Statistics & Data. Presentation for graduated student library assistants, Map & Data Library, University of Toronto.
• Waffle Chart. DataVizProject (website). (n.d.). Accessed 3 Oct 2019 from https://datavizproject.com/data-type/percentage-grid/
Feedback
• https://bit.ly/32MyKue