When to use data visualizations and what kind of data?

What works? What doesn't?

WHY

Data Visualizations

Which data to Visualize

• Numerical data • Non-numerical data

Also• Discrete data (is counted)• Continuous data (is measured)

Discrete Data

Contains certain values.

ExampleThe number of students in a class

(you can't have half a student)

Discrete data - still

• Number of children in a household• Number of languages a person speaks• Number of people sleeping in Parliament

Continuous data

• Time to complete a task• Height• Time to wake up in the morning• Speed of the train• Temperature

What to do with this data?

What works? Graphical representation forms

• Graphs: Scatter graph, bar, chart, line, picture etc

• Histograms• Tag clouds• Cartography – Designing Maps• Infographics

Scatter Graphs

Bar Graph

Picture or symbols GraphNumber of pupils in Mbale going to School

Primary SchoolPre-school

University Post-grad

Number of books read by Paul in the school library

Maps

Designing Maps

Histograms

Tag Clouds

Interactive Visualisations

Infographics

Pattern, Story, Graphics

References - LinksVisualizing.org - http://www.visualizing.org

Visage - http://www.visage.co

Flowing Data - http://flowingdata.com

Information is beautiful - http://www.informationisbeautiful.net

Google Charts - http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

d3.js - Data-Driven Documents - http://d3js.org/

Ushahidi - http://www.ushahidi.com