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Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning « information which has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information ».

According to Friedman (2008) the « main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. It doesn’t mean that data visualization needs to look boring to be functional or extremely sophisticated to look beautiful. To convey ideas effectively, both aesthetic form and functionality need to go hand in hand, providing insights into a rather sparse and complex data set by communicating its key-aspects in a more intuitive way. »

Data visualization strategies were recently used by the Barack Obama administration as a way to enhance and broaden the support of his campaign. The « Road to Recovery » visualization became famous by showing US job loss figures between December 2007 and January 2010. This enabled people to compare the number of jobs lost during President Obama’s first year in office with the number of jobs lost during President Bush’s last year in office.

by Wikipedia.

Data visualization is becoming an art and a discipline.
There are now blogs and books devoted to it, and even large corporations are becoming involved in using data visualization.

Google is one of the believers in visualizing data that’s why they gave a shout out to another Google initiative, the Data Viz Challenge.

Launch the winning project « Where Did My Tax Dollars Go? » by Anil Kandangath.

Since it has become sooo trendy –I even found some visual data in the metro journal. Here are a few examples.

Resources:

Jeffrey Veen, Designing our way through data. Retrieved from http://www.webdirections.org/resources/jeffrey-veen-designing-our-way-through-data/

Vitaly Friedman (January 14th, 2008) Data Visualization and Infographics Retrieved from http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/14/monday-inspiration-data-visualization-and-infographics/

Michael Friendly (2008) Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, statistical graphics, and data visualization Retrieved from http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/milestone/milestone.pdf.

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