Thinking numbers in pictures

Data visualization for research articles

—
Robert Kosara
Data Visualization Developer, Observable

rkosara@observablehq.com

@eagereyes
https://eagereyes.org

June 29, 2023

Outline
- The why and how of data visualization

- Three contexts for visualization

- Rainbows and uncertainty

- The role of text

- Q&A
The why and how of data visualization
—

June 29, 2023

Why Visualize Data?
Why?
The purpose of visualization
is insight, not pictures

Card, Mackinlay, Shneiderman, Readings in Information Visualization, 1999

Ad Reinhardt, How to Look at Modern Art in America, 1946
Anscombe example
Bar charts
- Independent axis categorical, dependent axis continuous
- Can be filtered and sorted
- Work well for data comparison between categories
- Usually sorted by value
- Always start the continuous axis at 0!
- Otherwise, comparison is distorted
- But also, complicated (Correll et al., 2020)
Bar charts are more complicated than youʼd think!
- Stacked bars generally a bad idea
- No common baseline
- Possibly part-whole comparisons
- Non-adjacent bars hard to compare, subject
to noise from other bars (Talbot et al., 2014)
- How do we read them?
- Length comparison
- Aspect ratio? Overall shape? Etc.
- Many possible proxies for reading,
depending on context and data

Jardine et al., The Perceptual Proxies of Visual Comparison, 2020

Line charts
- Independent axis usually time,
dependent axis continuous
- Related: area chart
- Show multiple series
- Smoothing to see (some) time patterns
- Dependent axis may or may not start at 0
- Depends on use case, data, etc.
- Can lead to issues with comparisons, though
Scatterplots
- Two continuous axes plotted against each other
- Useful for hundreds to low thousands of data points
- Great for finding clusters and estimating
correlation coefficients
- Scatterplot matrix for comparing many
data dimensions to each other
- Interaction: linking and brushing
Pie charts
- Independent axis categorical,
dependent axis continuous
- Similar to stacked bar chart
- How do we read them?
- Itʼs not angle!

- Often maligned, but work well for

part-whole comparison
- Not worse than treemaps
Many more…
Three contexts for visualization
—

June 29, 2023

Data visualization contexts
- Exploration and analysis

- Explanation

- Presentation
Context: Exploration and analysis
- Explore a dataset, ask specific questions
- Many charts, not much time spent on individual ones
- Generic charts to understand the data, no time for polish
- Goal is to work through many charts, not be selective
- Charts: Bar charts, line charts, scatterplots, etc.
Context: Explanation
- Help others understand, collaborate on analysis
- Fewer charts, more carefully chosen
- Interaction with others
- Start framing findings, sequence ideas
- Possibly use more specific charts,
like Sankey diagrams, treemaps, etc.
Context: Presentation
- Show what you found to an external audience
- Polished and well-chosen charts, both in type and content
- Highlighting and annotation
- Possibly use unusual charts that are
more specific and/or memorable
- Overarching story when presenting,
not just a collection of facts
https://xkcd.com/2713/
Rainbows and uncertainty
—

June 29, 2023

The 🌈 Color Map
https://doi.org/10.1111/jawr.12010
Common rainbow colormaps
Common rainbow colormaps Luminance-controlled rainbow colormaps
Rainbow color maps in a nutshell
Cons: Pros:

- Not monotonic in luminance (creating - Shown to be the most accurate when

ridges, etc.) reading values using a scale (especially
relevant for temperature on maps)
- Not perceptually uniform (color change
does not correspond to value change) - Draw attention to global structure

- Partition data into bands of colors (colors - Familiar, commonly used in context
of different names)
Showing Uncertainty
Kale et al., When-ish is my bus?, 2016
Kale et al., Visual Reasoning Strategies for Effect Size
Judgments and Decisions, 2020
The role of text
—

June 29, 2023

The Annotation Layer

Hanna Fairfield, Driving Safety, in Fits and Starts, 2012

Kale et al., When-ish is my bus?, 2016
Kale et al., Visual Reasoning Strategies for Effect Size
Judgments and Decisions, 2020
Text and memorability
- Text is an important element of a good
chart/figure
- Often underappreciated
- Shown to be memorable and important for
context and understanding
- Text also helps remember the data!
- Better options than “see Figure 87”
Conclusions
- Choice of chart does not just depend on the data
- Workhorse charts work for analysis, uncommon charts for presentation
- Important to understand context, audience, use case, etc.
- Visualization research is ongoing
- Recent work has implications for scientific charts and visualization
- Uncertainty visualization
- Use of color
- Communication (COVID-19!)
Recommended books
● Andy Kirk, Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design

● Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data

● Jonathan Schwabish, Better Data Visualizations: A Guide for Scholars,

Researchers, and Wonks

Q&A
 Thinking numbers in pictures

Data visualization for research articles

—
Robert Kosara
Data Visualization Developer, Observable

rkosara@observablehq.com
https://observablehq.com/@rkosara/numbers-in-pictures

@eagereyes
https://eagereyes.org

July 29, 2023