Blog Post 4: New Ways of Thinking About Data Visualization

This week our class focused on the presentation of data, specifically in graphical form. At the start of the class, I thought that I wouldn’t learn too much about data visualization. I know how to make graphs. I’ve made tons in my life. But the world of graphing is fun, as it has so many different types of graphs that you can make. The biggest challenge of graph making is deciding which type you need. 

Which raises the questions of what other mistakes I might make that I hadn’t thought of before?

To answer this question I explored some more of Michael Friendly’s gallery of the Best and the Worst of Statistical Graphics. 

The tab that really stood out to me was the one about “context”. When initially thinking about graphs for a math or science class, I just thought about plotting numbers that related to each other. But in the Humanities world (or even the STEM world), it is important to include more info or not to draw conclusions from incomplete graphs. Graphs can be quite misleading, as evidenced by this example: 

But context in this example, isn’t only other information in relation to your graph. It’s a more complete set of the data in the graph. You can still make a point and highlight specific points, but omission of data can make your graph bad! 

The other aspect of good graph making that I hadn’t thought about before was the creative and artistic aspect. What colors you use, what symbols you use and much more can tell readers a lot about your graph without too much work on their side. This was one of my favorite examples of a clever use of data and visualizations:

I appreciate how data visualization can tell more stories and look more beautiful than just a 2D plot of data. It requires making more informed decisions about how you visualize data, but using art and context are both things that can be used to up a graph’s game and make it more readable for an audience.