The Truthful Art (Ch5 & Ch6) : Mr. Holmes - MariaAguilarV/JMM-622-Infographics-and-Data-Visualization GitHub Wiki

In chapters 5 and 6, Cairo described the basic principles of visualization and how to explore the data. He starts by asking the same question I had when I started my “Infographics & Data Visualization” class: How do you know that you have chosen the right graphic form to represent your data? The truth is that there is not general answer to this question, since all chosen visualizations depend on the situation and what message the author is trying to convey. Choosing the best graph to represent the data includes thinking where we want to put the baseline, the scale of the axes and the hierarchy of the elements. There are many types of visualizations that we can use and each one has its own objective, we can use statistical graphs such as bar lines, lollipops charts, the donut or the radar chart; maps to represent general patterns; or histograms to show the frequency of specific values. After choosing how we want to represent our data, it is also very important to test the outcomes with a sample of the intended audience, in this way we make sure that the graph is delivering the accurate message.

Furthermore, Cairo talked about data and how to explore it, or as John W. Tukey said “making graphical detective work”. He said, “The key when exploring data is find patterns and trends lurking in the data and then observe the deviations from those patterns”. Some basic terms to take into account when working with data are the mode, medium, median, and range; differentiate each of these terms helps to better understand and represent the data.

What I really liked about these chapters is that the author gives many examples of data visualizations to illustrate his point of view, and it is useful to see how one chart can be represented in many other forms and deliver a complete different message. Since I started this class, I stop every time I see an infographic, this week I found the following graph in the Financial Times and I thought how beautiful it is and how it delivers immediately the message they are trying to send. By the way, what is the name of this chart?