Data visualization is a method of visually representing information that identifies patterns & trends & allows users to get a quick understanding. Data is presented using visual objects in ways that text, numbers, or straightforward graphs cannot, such as color, brightness, size, form, & motion, which facilitate comprehension. Scattered plots, heat maps, bubble clouds, Venn diagrams, & other visualization methods are available in addition to the more conventional pie charts, bar graphs, and line graphs. Today, we will discuss the Importance of Data Visualization.
As we gather more & more data, data visualization becomes increasingly critical since we are virtually drowning in it and can’t distinguish what is crucial & what isn’t. Take the product development process for a brand-new automobile or airplane, for example.
It is important to analyze test data, yet a tremendous amount of data is created with each test drive or flight, making it challenging to handle at the required pace. We can grasp such complicated data & spot patterns or abnormalities thanks to visualization tools.
Some Undeniable Importance of Data Visualization
1. Large & Complicated Data Are Absorbed Instantly
We can quickly understand vast amounts of information when it is presented in an efficient way. This is due to the fact that processing ready-made visuals through the neural network is simpler than producing our own visualization from text or statistics.
We quickly internalize something after we’ve seen it. Because of our dependence on our smartphone or tablet screens, we now have shorter attention spans; therefore, getting information as a “screenshot” is useful.
On the other side, if your company has systems in place to gather data but needs an efficient means to display it to stakeholders, you are likely to get the predicted business advantages since users will find it challenging to interpret cumbersome & difficult-to-understand reports.
The conceptual meaning of these ‘chunks’ is highlighted using color, line weight, size, & positioning, which all work to align the material with its order of priority. The portions are simple to grasp & navigate for the viewer.
2. Faster & Effective Analysis
One Importance of Data Visualization is it is capable of faster and more effective analysis. You may pull information from your data to produce engaging tales for investors incredibly quickly & easily with the help of visualization tools.
Imagine explaining developing patterns & other important insights to your audience utilizing the tables & spreadsheets. What would be their reaction? Would you receive their support after laying out the plan?
3. Better Decision Making
If you are still wondering Why Is Data Visualization Important? Consider this as an answer. Meetings in the business world that discuss visual data frequently wind up being shorter & more readily agreed. Making choices more quickly & giving viewers a better understanding of patterns & trends are both possible with data visualization.
The advantages of data analytics are now accessible to many jobs within your organization, even those who may not be specialists in the subject, thanks to visualization.
Your sales personnel can comprehend customer behavior & attitudes better if you use the proper data visualization technologies, even though they might need to be more specialists at doing so themselves.
With the correct equipment & instruction, you can become specialists through data visualizations, a combination of technical analytics & imaginative narrative.
While some data visualizations aid in analysis, others make information fascinating. Build your own depending on your unique goals, the type of data, & the demands of various stakeholders.
4. Facilitates Quick Action
As we said earlier, our brains process visual content—such as maps & graphs—60,000 times more quickly than text reports. This implies that a captivating data narrative packed with simple-to-understand visuals can facilitate speedier decision-making & actions.
5. Recognizing Patterns & Trends
Massive amounts of data offer countless chances for organizations to derive valuable insights. Yes, insights that might set you apart from your rivals.
By concentrating exclusively on the areas that require immediate action, you may save a significant amount of resources by examining these patterns, such as time.
6. Better Audience Engagement
Thanks to a strong visual presentation, viewers are much more engaged when they can relate to the facts. Data visualizations may influence perception & behavior because images evoke strong emotions. Multiple stakeholders may observe, evaluate, and debate data insights thanks to visualizations, which also facilitate communication & cooperation.
Data presentation in simple, graphic formats is increasingly what we demand. For instance, we consult Google Analytics to learn about the performance of our own websites since it offers charts that make the data much easier to interpret than if it were just tabular data.
Another illustration might be the geographical distribution of sales or the locations of retail stores & distributors. Viewing this as a geographical distribution rather than a descriptive paragraph would be more beneficial for you.
May you design visualizations that viewers may alter, query, & use to draw their own conclusions? This raises the data’s level of trustworthiness.
7. It Aids Analytics
One Importance of Data Visualization is the support it provides to Analytics. Analytics is the process of developing insights from data.
Data visualization is a crucial component of analytics because it enables analysts to take a huge dataset & reduce it to something that is simple to comprehend & analyze. But with data visualizations, analysts can swiftly see connections between factors & come to more wise choices.
8. It Supports Business Intelligence
Aiding Business intelligence is an answer to Why is Data Visualization Important? The process of turning unprocessed data into useful insights is known as business intelligence (BI).
Data visualization is crucial to BI because it enables organizations to view their data differently & determine their overall strategy more accurately.
Let’s imagine, for illustration’s sake, that a business intended to boost sales by 15% this year. They might watch sales over time, determine which goods are selling well & which ones are not, and then create marketing campaigns & focused promotions in response.
Techniques Used in Data Visualization
Now we know some of the Importance of Data Visualization, let’s have a look at the techniques used by it. Here are seven different categories of data visualization techniques you should be aware of:
Pie Chart: A pie chart is a circular graph that displays the percentage that each category contributes to the overall sum. It is separated into portions (or “slices”), each a percentage of the whole. Pie charts are frequently used to illustrate the percentage each category contributes to a total.
Bar Chart: A bar chart is a graph that demonstrates the relative importance of each category to the overall. A percentage of the total is represented by each of the vertical bars that split it up. Comparing several categories using bar charts is a typical practice.
Gantt Chart: The execution of tasks is depicted on a Gantt chart, a sort of bar chart. It is split into horizontal bars, each representing a work that will be carried out at a specific time. The usual method of displaying the execution of tasks is using Gantt charts.
Waterfall Chart: A waterfall chart is a graph that illustrates the rate of change in how much each category contributes to the overall sum. Each vertical bar, which separates it into sections, reflects an increase or decrease in value over time.
FAQ
Q: Can I use MS Excel as a Data Visualization Tool?
A: MS Excel has some data visualization features, but it is wise to use tools specially created for data visualization.
Q: What data is displayed using A Box & Whisker Plot?
A: Data like how different products are selling in different regions can be displayed using that technique.
Q: What are some Data Visualization tools?
A: There are many data visualization tools available in the market now. Here are some of them:
- Tableau.
- Dundas BI.
- Jupyter Notebook.
- Zoho Reports.
- Google Charts.
- Sisense.
- Datawrapper.
- Infogram.