Introduction to Data Visualization

“By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore with your eyes. A sort of information map. And when you’re lost in information, an information map is kind of useful.” – David McCandless

All of us are constantly exposed to data visualization of some type. Take the number of active COVID cases, for example; you will come across multiple data visualizations for this. One such dashboard showing a visualization of the deaths due to the coronavirus is shown below. 

Image source - Sean’s public Tableau Profile 

This dashboard is created by Sean Oslin, and he will be the faculty member for this module. Before we discuss data visualization any further, you will hear from Sean in the forthcoming video. 

So, in the video, you saw Sean talk about his background in data visualization. 
Sean has degrees from the Universities of Michigan and Washington. In the last few years of his career, he specialized in data visualization using Tableau. His public Tableau profile has multiple visualizations (also called vizzes in Tableau language), which he built using fancy charts, such as Sankey charts and Funnel charts. Currently, Sean is working as a data scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton. 

In this module

The forthcoming video will cover the scope of the current module. 

So, as Sean explained in the video, in this module, you will learn: 

1. What data visualization is and where we use it; 
2. What Tableau (Public) is;
3. How to create common chart types in Tableau; and
4. How to import, join, and manipulate data in Tableau.

In this session

In this session, Sean will explain the fundaments of data visualization. You will, 

1. understand data visualizations
2. differentiate between good and bad data visualizations 
3. be introduced to Tableau (Public)
4. learn ways to build a strong Tableau profile. 

With that said, let us go ahead and begin exploring data visualizations.