TIDES-002 - Data Science - Book Excerpt - Python Data Visualization Essentials Guide - Why Data Visualization?
Kalilur Rahman
Director @ Novartis | Technology Transformation Leader| Author | Ex-Accenture/Cognizant/TCS | Life Long Learner | Quizzer | Mentor | Speaker | Influencer | Operations | Consulting | Quality Engineering
Let us start the newsletter’s second edition with another key chapter from my book Python Data Visualization Essentials Guide by BPB publications. I will publish one more chapter excerpt next week, after that I shall stick to other topics for this ?newsletter. Hope you like it.?
"To find signals in data, we must learn to reduce the noise - not just the noise that resides in the data, but also the noise that resides in us. It is nearly impossible for noisy minds to perceive anything but noise in data." ― Stephen Few
Objective
This chapter aims at giving an introduction to how powerful visual storytelling is and how good data visualization helps in achieving the same. We will explore some good examples available in the public domain and how benefits were realized. The most important objective of this chapter is to give a list of good resources to explore and leverage and recommendations to read and upgrade knowledge on visual storytelling, data visualization and become an excellent visual communicator by leveraging data power visualization.??
The power of visual storytelling
The power to connect - Humans need to connect, interpret, learn, understand to debate and accept, and cognize the facts to connect with data or a visual being presented. Most of us connect better with visuals and stories than numbers and text. Hence, good visual storytelling fulfills a basic human need: the eagerness or a hardwired interest for stories.?
The power to derive insights - Good visualization stories help the audience uncover the messages and stories you are keen to share. They may even uncover some untold stories. A powerful message that conveys untold stories makes the visualization vivid and colorful to remember and understand. Finally, it leaves the audience wanting more information and messages.?
The power to influence - Good communicators who can tell compelling stories rule the world, and so goes the adage that goes, "Those who tell the stories rule the world." The art of visual storytelling in business is absolutely important as humans get connected at an emotional and psychological level better than at a cognitive level. For example, marketing is no longer a discipline to communicate about the products you sell; but it is about the stories you want to tell and influence.?
The power to inform and make quick decisions - Human beings are trained by the brain to handle visuals better, quicker, and impactfully as the cognitive effort is lesser than processing text or voice-based information. Author - Ekaterina Walter, in the book "The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to use visuals, videos, and social media for marketing your brand," says that?
"Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text by the human brain, and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
Humans evolved over millennia to respond to visual information long before they developed the ability to read text. Images act as shortcuts to the brain: we are visual creatures, and we are programmed to react to visuals more than words."
Taking A picture is worth a thousand words; a visual story is probably worth more than that. This is why visual information in social media is much more powerful than any media in the world currently due to the reach, impact, and power it possesses. The benefit of good design for visual storytelling is summarized as the design is about solving problems and providing elegant solutions. Information design is about solving information problems?- as per a brilliant quote from McCandless in his wildly popular TED speech.
The "Gap minder'' website – www.gapminder.org, the brainchild of Hans Rosling, covers some of the brilliant visualizations delivered. One of the key points outlined by Hans Rosling is that our mind filters what is most dramatic and easy to associate with as the key essence. This means that to connect well to get user attention, content with emotional value add is paramount. Visual connect is much more than facts being passed verbally and is a great connect. Some inerasable memories about movies seen decades ago are an example of this.
There are plenty of examples of compressing tons of information into a single, powerful infographic and outline the power of visual storytelling. One brilliant example is available at https://www.gapminder.org/tools/ that showcases various trends of the progress of nations in terms of animations, maps, trends, ranks using various types of charts and graphs. While we shall be covering most of the technical aspects of these graphs in the rest of the book through program snippets, it is a good idea to check this tool.
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Another powerful summary of how data visualization has evolved and helped over the years can be understood from how the financial summary is shown in famous print media powerhouses such as New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. With the introduction of simple graph/visual elements, they've reduced stock-related pages by 7-8 pages with very powerful indicators. One can visualize stock performance with dots showing the range and trend for the highs/lows of the stocks. A good visualization can compress 1000s of pages, inputs, billions of data points into a meaningful insight that helps top leaders make big decisions easily.?
Good examples of data visualization
Now let us see some examples of good data visualization. To showcase this, let us revisit the two examples we covered in Chapter 1 - The Broad Street cholera outbreak and that of Florence Nightingale's chart.?Why did they make a huge impact? They were simple and factual – using good data, represented a lot of data in a single picture, and conveyed a very clear, actionable message. Over the last 20 years, the usage of brilliant information design, computing power, availability of tools has helped in the explosion of multiple ways to render brilliant visualizations.?
Let us take an example of a KPI or a metrics dashboard. This sample gives some key metrics. However, the data visualization for business needs could have a myriad of metrics across functions and industries. This dashboard gives some operational statistics for ecommerce websites, such as page views, time spent, visitor locations, etc., that can help the team take action.?
Figure 2.2: A sample dashboard created using data visualization Tools – ecommerce site statistics dashboard
What we looked at is a simple usage we may see in a business environment.?
Let's take another visualization. This example is explained in detail in Chapter-8 of the book. Is there a possibility of using the words used in a book as a map? We shall check how to do this with the code and explanation later. This code uses Rabindranath Tagore's Gitanjali and a map of India to generate the visualization as in Figure 2.3.?
Figure 2.3: A visualization of Tagore's Gitanjali is an India Map using Python
Finally, another brilliant visualization of all the Oscars awards over the last 90+ years represents a simplified representation graphically. The insights are very simple for what one needs to have in a picture to win the best actor or actress awards. One intriguing story told is that no sportsperson character wins an award unless the role is a boxer.?This visualization can be seen at the following URL - https://iibawards-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/projects/images/000/000/391/page.jpg?1403858126?
The examples given above are just a few of the good examples of brilliant visualization. There are thousands of such brilliant visualizations available. Now let us see some of the benefits of good visualization.?
Benefits of visualization
We covered some of the benefits in earlier sections in this book. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, the book The Power of Visual Storytelling: How to use visuals, videos, and social media to market your brand says that the human brain processes visuals faster than text (up to 60000 times) and that our brain transmits more visual information than other forms (more than 90%). From the same source, we also infer that the human brain is capable of processing images in a period of fewer than 13 milliseconds.?
Let us see some of the benefits of good data visualization.?
Recommendations and resources
There are plenty of resources to refer to and benefit from. I am including some of the brilliant resources to read available on the internet.?
Let us start with some brilliant data visualization resources?
领英推荐
Excellent Data Sources
Conclusion
In this chapter, we covered a good amount of introduction to data visualization, its importance, and the key elements to be aware of. We also looked at the key features one needs to be aware of to build data visualization from a storytelling perspective. Good data visualization is like a blockbuster movie or an enthralling ad. It needs many skills, excellent planning, strategy, and messaging skills to make a huge impact.?
The six key elements we mentioned in chapter-1 were strategy, structure, story, data, design, and user. The ability to create a brilliant visualization is a niche skill and helps one propel their career. It is advisable to structure the data visualization clearly to get your message across. Adapting the style and content to the occasion and the context relevant to the users is important. A strategy to the design can be outlined with structured thoughts with end-users in mind before starting the data visualization design. Having a good handle on the data and how to use them is key.
Most importantly, involving the users by highlighting the information that will excite them in the visuals is key. To boost engagement, it is important to improve the skills to visually convince the audience. It is important to seize the user's attention by removing distractions such as jarring colors and text and information overload.? The user feedback can also be leveraged to strengthen the visualization skills.
I hope you enjoyed the second extract
More in the book...
This book aims to equip you with a sound knowledge of #Python in conjunction with the concepts you need to master to succeed as a #datavisualization expert.
This book is for all #dataanalytics professionals, #datascientists, and #datamining hobbyists who want to be strong data visualizers by learning all the popular Python data visualization libraries.
?? Check the link in the comments section to get links to the "Free Preview" of the book.
?? Key Features ??
?? Practice your data visualization understanding across numerous datasets and real examples.
?? Learn to visualize geospatial and time-series datasets.
?? Perform correlation and EDA analysis using Pandas and Matplotlib.
?? Get to know storytelling of complex and unstructured data using Bokeh and Pandas.
?? Learn best practices in writing clean and short python scripts for a quicker visual summary of datasets.
Build your data science skills. Start data visualization Using Python. Right away. Become a good data analyst by creating quality data visualizations using Python.?
?? Exciting coverage on loads of Python libraries, including Matplotlib, Seaborn, Pandas, and Plotly. Tons of examples, illustrations, and use-cases to demonstrate visual storytelling of varied datasets. Covers a strong fundamental understanding of exploratory data analysis (EDA), statistical modeling, and data mining.?
DESCRIPTION?
?? Data visualization plays a major role in solving data science challenges with various capabilities it offers. This book aims to equip you with a sound knowledge of Python in conjunction with the concepts you need to master to succeed as a data visualization expert.
The book starts with a brief introduction to the world of data visualization and talks about why it is important, the history of visualization, and the capabilities it offers. You will learn how to do simple Python-based visualization with examples with progressive complexity of key features. The book starts with Matplotlib and explores the power of data visualization with over 50 examples. It then explores the power of data visualization using one of the popular exploratory data analysis-oriented libraries, Pandas.
The book talks about statistically inclined data visualization libraries such as Seaborn. The book also teaches how we can leverage bokeh and Plotly for interactive data visualization. Each chapter is enriched and loaded with 30+ examples that will guide you in learning everything about data visualization and storytelling of mixed datasets.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
??Learn to work with popular Python libraries and frameworks, including Seaborn, Bokeh, and Plotly.
??Practice your data visualization understanding across numerous datasets and real examples.
??Learn to visualize geospatial and time-series datasets.
??Perform correlation and EDA analysis using Pandas and Matplotlib.
??Get to know storytelling of complex and unstructured data using Bokeh and Pandas.
??Learn best practices in writing clean and short python scripts for a quicker visual summary of datasets.?
WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR??
This book is for all data analytics professionals, data scientists, and data mining hobbyists who want to be strong data visualizers by learning all the popular Python data visualization libraries. Prior working knowledge of Python is assumed. This is a very helpful guide for the beginners, hobbyists and python and data science enthusiasts planning to hone their data visualization skills
Table of Contents
Links to buy the book.
From the Publisher BPB Publications ==> https://in.bpbonline.com/products/python-data-visualization-essential-guide?
Soon to be Published in the following portals as well.
Hope you will enjoy the book and cascade the learning.
#BPBOnline #Matplotlib #NumPy #Pandas #Seaborn #Bokeh #Plotly #Folium #Altair #Python #datascience #datascientists #datavizualization #dataviz #visualization #techcommunity #techbooks #datavisualisation #krpoints #lifelonglearning #datascience
DCE
2 年thank you
Senior Information Governance Specialist at Abu Dhabi Transmission and Despatch Company
2 年??
Well written Kalilur Rahman
Sr. Delivery Consultant
2 年Well written kalli
Soporte TI e Infraestructura
2 年Thanks for sharing, Kalilur.