31 August 2021

Science: On Data Visualization (Quotes)

"When visualization tools act as a catalyst to early visual thinking about a relatively unexplored problem, neither the semantics nor the pragmatics of map signs is a dominant factor. On the other hand, syntactics (or how the sign-vehicles, through variation in the visual variables used to construct them, relate logically to one another) are of critical importance." (Alan M MacEachren, "How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design", 1995)

"The nature of maps and of their use in science and society is in the midst of remarkable change - change that is stimulated by a combination of new scientific and societal needs for geo-referenced information and rapidly evolving technologies that can provide that information in innovative ways. A key issue at the heart of this change is the concept of ‘visualization’." (Alan M MacEachren, "Exploratory cartographic visualization: advancing the agenda", 1997)

"Visualizations can be used to explore data, to confirm a hypothesis, or to manipulate a viewer. [...] In exploratory visualization the user does not necessarily know what he is looking for. This creates a dynamic scenario in which interaction is critical. [...] In a confirmatory visualization, the user has a hypothesis that needs to be tested. This scenario is more stable and predictable. System parameters are often predetermined." (Usama Fayyad et al, "Information Visualization in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery", 2002) 

"Dashboards and visualization are cognitive tools that improve your 'span of control' over a lot of business data. These tools help people visually identify trends, patterns and anomalies, reason about what they see and help guide them toward effective decisions. As such, these tools need to leverage people's visual capabilities. With the prevalence of scorecards, dashboards and other visualization tools now widely available for business users to review their data, the issue of visual information design is more important than ever." (Richard Brath & Michael Peters, "Dashboard Design: Why Design is Important," DM Direct, 2004)

"Data visualization [...] expresses the idea that it involves more than just representing data in a graphical form (instead of using a table). The information behind the data should also be revealed in a good display; the graphic should aid readers or viewers in seeing the structure in the data. The term data visualization is related to the new field of information visualization. This includes visualization of all kinds of information, not just of data, and is closely associated with research by computer scientists." (Antony Unwin et al, "Introduction" [in "Handbook of Data Visualization"], 2008) 

"The main goal of data visualization is its ability to visualize data, communicating information clearly and effectively. 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 dataset by communicating its key aspects in a more intuitive way. Yet designers often tend to discard the balance between design and function, creating gorgeous data visualizations which fail to serve its main purpose - communicate information." (Vitaly Friedman, "Data Visualization and Infographics", Smashing Magazine, 2008)

"With the ever increasing amount of empirical information that scientists from all disciplines are dealing with, there exists a great need for robust, scalable and easy to use clustering techniques for data abstraction, dimensionality reduction or visualization to cope with and manage this avalanche of data."  (Jörg Reichardt, "Structure in Complex Networks", 2009)

"So what is the difference between a chart or graph and a visualization? […] a chart or graph is a clean and simple atomic piece; bar charts contain a short story about the data being presented. A visualization, on the other hand, seems to contain much more ʻchart junkʼ, with many sometimes complex graphics or several layers of charts and graphs. A visualization seems to be the super-set for all sorts of data-driven design." (Brian Suda, "A Practical Guide to Designing with Data", 2010)

"All graphics present data and allow a certain degree of exploration of those same data. Some graphics are almost all presentation, so they allow just a limited amount of exploration; hence we can say they are more infographics than visualization, whereas others are mostly about letting readers play with what is being shown, tilting more to the visualization side of our linear scale. But every infographic and every visualization has a presentation and an exploration component: they present, but they also facilitate the analysis of what they show, to different degrees." (Alberto Cairo, "The Functional Art", 2011)

"The first and main goal of any graphic and visualization is to be a tool for your eyes and brain to perceive what lies beyond their natural reach." (Alberto Cairo, "The Functional Art", 2011)

"Thinking of graphics as art leads many to put bells and whistles over substance and to confound infographics with mere illustrations." (Alberto Cairo, "The Functional Art", 2011)

"Good infographic design is about storytelling by combining data visualization design and graphic design." (Randy Krum, "Good Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design", 2013)

"Good visualization is a winding process that requires statistics and design knowledge. Without the former, the visualization becomes an exercise only in illustration and aesthetics, and without the latter, one of only analyses. On their own, these are fine skills, but they make for incomplete data graphics. Having skills in both provides you with the luxury - which is growing into a necessity - to jump back and forth between data exploration and storytelling." (Nathan Yau, "Data Points: Visualization That Means Something", 2013)

"The biggest thing to know is that data visualization is hard. Really difficult to pull off well. It requires harmonization of several skills sets and ways of thinking: conceptual, analytic, statistical, graphic design, programmatic, interface-design, story-telling, journalism - plus a bit of 'gut feel'. The end result is often simple and beautiful, but the process itself is usually challenging and messy." (David McCandless, 2013)

"Visualization can be appreciated purely from an aesthetic point of view, but it’s most interesting when it’s about data that’s worth looking at. That’s why you start with data, explore it, and then show results rather than start with a visual and try to squeeze a dataset into it. It’s like trying to use a hammer to bang in a bunch of screws. […] Aesthetics isn’t just a shiny veneer that you slap on at the last minute. It represents the thought you put into a visualization, which is tightly coupled with clarity and affects interpretation." (Nathan Yau, "Data Points: Visualization That Means Something", 2013)

"Visualization is what happens when you make the jump from raw data to bar graphs, line charts, and dot plots. […] In its most basic form, visualization is simply mapping data to geometry and color. It works because your brain is wired to find patterns, and you can switch back and forth between the visual and the numbers it represents. This is the important bit. You must make sure that the essence of the data isn’t lost in that back and forth between visual and the value it represents because if you can’t map back to the data, the visualization is just a bunch of shapes." (Nathan Yau, "Data Points: Visualization That Means Something", 2013)

"What is good visualization? It is a representation of data that helps you see what you otherwise would have been blind to if you looked only at the naked source. It enables you to see trends, patterns, and outliers that tell you about yourself and what surrounds you. The best visualization evokes that moment of bliss when seeing something for the first time, knowing that what you see has been right in front of you, just slightly hidden. Sometimes it is a simple bar graph, and other times the visualization is complex because the data requires it." (Nathan Yau, "Data Points: Visualization That Means Something", 2013)

"Just because data is visualized doesn’t necessarily mean that it is accurate, complete, or indicative of the right course of action. Exhibiting a healthy skepticism is almost always a good thing." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"To be sure, data doesn’t always need to be visualized, and many data visualizations just plain suck. Look around you. It’s not hard to find truly awful representations of information. Some work in concept but fail because they are too busy; they confuse people more than they convey information [...]. Visualization for the sake of visualization is unlikely to produce desired results - and this goes double in an era of Big Data. Bad is still bad, even and especially at a larger scale." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"We are all becoming more comfortable with data. Data visualization is no longer just something we have to do at work. Increasingly, we want to do it as consumers and as citizens. Put simply, visualizing helps us understand what’s going on in our lives - and how to solve problems." (Phil Simon, "The Visual Organization: Data Visualization, Big Data, and the Quest for Better Decisions", 2014)

"Apart from the technical challenge of working with the data itself, visualization in big data is different because showing the individual observations is just not an option. But visualization is essential here: for analysis to work well, we have to be assured that patterns and errors in the data have been spotted and understood. That is only possible by visualization with big data, because nobody can look over the data in a table or spreadsheet." (Robert Grant, "Data Visualization: Charts, Maps and Interactive Graphics", 2019)

"As a first principle, any visualization should convey its information quickly and easily, and with minimal scope for misunderstanding. Unnecessary visual clutter makes more work for the reader’s brain to do, slows down the understanding (at which point they may give up) and may even allow some incorrect interpretations to creep in." (Robert Grant, "Data Visualization: Charts, Maps and Interactive Graphics", 2019)

"One very common problem in data visualization is that encoding numerical variables to area is incredibly popular, but readers can’t translate it back very well." (Robert Grant, "Data Visualization: Charts, Maps and Interactive Graphics", 2019)

"There is often no one 'best' visualization, because it depends on context, what your audience already knows, how numerate or scientifically trained they are, what formats and conventions are regarded as standard in the particular field you’re working in, the medium you can use, and so on. It’s also partly scientific and partly artistic, so you get to express your own design style in it, which is what makes it so fascinating." (Robert Grant, "Data Visualization: Charts, Maps and Interactive Graphics", 2019)

"The best approach is to build visualizations in the most digestible form, fitted to how that executive thinks. You will have to interact with executives, show them different visualizations, and see how they react in order to learn which forms work best for them. Be ready to fail often and learn fast, particularly with visualizations." (John Lucker)

"Visualisation is fundamentally limited by the number of pixels you can pump to a screen. If you have big data, you have way more data than pixels, so you have to summarise your data. Statistics gives you lots of really good tools for this." (Hadley Wickham)

"We often think of visualization as a design and programming task, but the process starts further back with the data. You have to understand the data - its trends and patterns, along with its flaws and imperfections - and the rest follows." (Nathan Yau)

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