Data Science by Nireekshan
1. Basics of Data Visualization
Data Visualization
Data visualization is the graphical representation of information and data.
o Visualizing data such as graphs, charts, and maps provide us with an easy way of
identifying and understanding trends, patterns and outliers in the data
Best quote
A picture gives more meaningful information than thousand words
If data is in textual information, then can’t we identify the patterns?
However, if data is in textual information, then yes, we can even identify but it’s very
difficult.
Why Visualize Data?
Our eyes tend to be drawn more to colors and patterns.
Data visualization is a special type of visual art that can easily grab our attention and keep
the eyes on the message.
It is easy for us to differentiate between a square and a circle, red and blue.
We have been used to a visual culture such as art, TV ads, and movies.
After seeing a chart, we can quickly identify trends and outliers.
The advantages of data visualization improved sight, faster decision making & etc
Data Visualization Techniques
Choosing the right visualization technique is a key factor to ensuring that the data is well
understood.
So, before visualizing you have to choose right method to use.
There are a variety of techniques that a data analyst can use to present data and show the
correlations.
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Data Science by Nireekshan
Common data visualization techniques
Charts
Plots
Maps
Diagrams and matrices & etc
Charts
This provides the easiest way of showing the development of either one or more data sets.
There are different types of charts that you can use to visualize your data.
o Bar and Line charts
These explains the relationships between elements over time
o Pie charts, this explains the proportions of the elements of one whole.
Plots
We can visualize the data in 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional.
Plots help to distribute the data and display the relationship between the sets as well as
their parameters on the plot.
Different plots are,
o Bubble plot
o Scatter plot
o Box plot
It displays the relationships the large volumes of data
Maps
Maps are widely used in different types of industries.
They allow the positioning of elements on relevant areas and objects-building plans,
geographical maps, website layouts, etc.
Different maps are,
o Heat maps
o Dot distribution maps
Diagrams and Matrices
A matrix is a technique for data visualization technique that helps in reflecting the
correlations between multiple data sets that are updated constantly like in streaming.
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Data Science by Nireekshan
2. Exploring the Libraries
In python we have different data visualization libraries are avaiable.
All these are open source libraries
o matplotlib
o seaborn & etc
Matplotlib
Matplotlib is the most popular python plotting library.
It has a module called pyplot that makes plotting easy by providing features for controlling
font properties, line styles, formatting axes, etc.
Matplotlib is very good for creating graphs like line charts, bar charts, histograms and
many more.
Matplotlib – Environment
By default matplotlib will not come if we install python
We need to install manually by using command.
Open command prompt and execute below command
matplotlib installation
pip install matplotlib
Seaborn
This is a library used for data visualization and it is based on the Matplotlib library.
With Seaborn, you can create charts.
The tool provides its users with a lot of flexibility when creating plots since the user can
choose from a wide range of plotting styles.
The library is good at mapping the features to your data in an efficient manner.
seaborn installation
pip install seaborn
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