Present Like a Shark! - A Guide to Data Visualization

mostakimvip06 · Post by **mostakimvip06** » Tue Jan 21, 2025 6:20 am

Data is everywhere. Everything around us consists of data that can be written down. Not everything is worth analyzing in this respect, of course. However, in a situation where we have certain data that we want to present to the world, such as the great performance of our company, the effectiveness of our innovative solutions or we simply want to visualize our area of activity, it is definitely worth presenting it in an attractive and legible way. Just having such data is only half the battle, because what good is it if no one else knows about it. This is where the field of data visualization comes in, thanks to which we will be able to show the world in a simple and pleasant way from the best side.

Contents
How to choose the right type of chart/diagram?
Who is the recipient?
What data do you use?
Have you got all the answers?
In one of our previous posts, we described how to present data using the Google Data Studio tool (today Looker Studio), drawing it directly from Google analytics - Visualize data - Google Data Studio . Today, however, we will focus on the visual aspect of presenting data and choosing the right forms of visualization.

The main tools of the visualization field are charts and diagrams , which we will talk about today. Since there are so many types of them, today I will describe a few of the most important ones from each field. So how do you choose the right type of chart/diagram?

How to choose the right type of chart/diagram?
Before we start working on visually representing our data, we need to answer a few fundamental questions:

What do you want to communicate? What is your message?
Each infographic should have a clearly defined message, thanks to which we will be lebanon telemarketing data able to properly direct our data to trigger the desired reaction among recipients. Attention, at the stage of directing our data we must be especially careful, because from this level it is very easy to cross the border of manipulation.

What is the purpose of visualizing this data?
Having defined the message of our visualization, we need to go a step further and determine how we will achieve our message. There are several main goals that a chart/diagram can fulfill:

a) Comparison
Data visualization, which aims to compare data, can do it in two different ways: comparative or correlational. The main purpose of such a chart is to highlight the differences between data A and data B.

b) Composition
The purpose of such a diagram is to present all the components of the selected topic in such a way that all its elements are visible.

c) Presentation of the distribution of values into individual elements (Distribution)
It is a chart or graph aimed at presenting the distribution of values into individual elements. Its main purpose is to provide information about which sectors the individual data is located in and what their values are.

d) Connections
Its purpose is to show the dependencies between individual elements, what the relationships are between them and how they interact with each other.

Who is the recipient?
Knowing the target group is extremely important when designing data visually, because based on this information we can determine not only the type of diagram we will use, but also its graphic design and the language we will use.

What data do you use?
Analyzing input data is also very important at the beginning of planning our visualization, because specific types of content may exclude visualization forms. For example, if our data is not any numerical values - we will not use most pie or bar charts. We distinguish several types of data:

Numeric (numeric values, e.g. amount, height)
Ordinal (text values that have a specific order, sequence, e.g. skill levels, days of the week)
Nominal (text values that have no numerical relationship to each other, e.g. "monitor, mouse, keyboard" or "water, tea, coffee"
In addition to the type of data itself, it is also worth analyzing its quantity, because not all types of charts will be adapted to large amounts of content.

Have you got all the answers?
Great, then below we present 28 types of charts, divided into their purpose and supported data formats.