predictive analytics

1. Creating Great Data
Visualizations with Low
Cost Tools
July 26, 2017

2. Laura Quinn
Founder, Idealware
Consultant
laurasquinn@gmail.com
INTRODUCTION

3. www.Idealware.org
INTRODUCTION

4. Can be found on the course
page!
Our Objectives
 What’s the Purpose of Your
Visualization?
 Eight Principles of
Communicating Through
Data
 Choosing a Visualization
 Is Excel Right for Your
Needs?
 Data Visualization
Specialists
 Other Options
INTRODUCTION

5. Data Can Be Hard to Use
INTRODUCTION

6. Pretty Data Is Not Necessarily Better
INTRODUCTION

7. How Can We Highlight What’s Important?
From Children
Now’s “2009
California Report
Card,” showing the
relationship between
race and preschool
enrollment
INTRODUCTION

8. What’s The Purpose of Your
Visualization?
1

9. Are You Exploring the Data?
Clearly a trend here! Maybe one here?
PURPOSE OF VISUALIZATION

10. Are You Formatting it For Decision Making?
Are you
presenting a
neutral case so
your audience—
maybe your own
staff members—
can use the info
to make their
own decision?
PURPOSE OF VISUALIZATION

11. Or Are You Telling a Story?
From LSC FY 2017 Budget Request
PURPOSE OF VISUALIZATION

12. Eight Principles of
Communicating Through Data
2

13. 1. Define What Question You’re Answering
“Is the organization
improving on this
metric?”
“How do these
demographics
compare to last year?”
“Are these results
unusual?”
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

14. Don’t just pull data off the
internet without being sure
of their source.
Include the source in your
visualization.
Don’t combine data from
different sources into one
data set.
2. Use Accurate Data
98.7% of all facts
on the Internet
are completely
accurate
Source: The Internet
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

15. 3. Experiment With Ways to Answer
Given your question
and your data, what
are different ways to
visualize the
answer?
• What kind of
visualization?
• Over what time
period?
• Graphing pure
numbers vs.
percentage vs.
percent change?
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

16. 1. Position along a scale
2. Length
3. Slope/ Direction
4. Angle
4. Go with Cognitive Research
Cleveland and McGill, in a seminal paper, created a hierarchical
chart by what is most easily and accurately understood.
10
5
0
5. Area
6. Volume
7. Curvature
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

17. 34
35
36
37
38
39
40
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
5. Faithfully Represent Your Data
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
In particular, treat your axes with respect.
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

18. 6. Tailor it to Your Audience
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

19. 7. Make it as Simple as Possible
Both graphs
contain the same
information, but
the second is far
easier to read.
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

20. 8. Remove Everything You Can
%US Adults Who Report Their Health as "Fair" or "Poor
0
5
10
15
20
25
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
3
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
5
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
7
1
9
9
8
1
9
9
9
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
1
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
3
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
5
2
0
0
6
Income Below Poverty Line
Income 100- 200% of Poverty
Line
Income More than 200% Above
Poverty Line
% US Adults Who Report Their Health as "Fair" or
"Poor"
0
5
1
0
1
5
20
25
1
9
9
2
1
9
9
4
1
9
9
6
1
9
9
8
2
0
0
0
2
0
0
2
2
0
0
4
2
0
0
6
Income Below
Poverty Line
Income 1
00-
200% of
Poverty Line
Income More
than 200%
Above Poverty
Line
EIGHT PRINCIPLES

21. Choosing the Visualization
for Your Purpose
3

22. Simple Numbers
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION
Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles Annual Report

23. Line Charts
Likely your
best choice
to show a
trend,
especially
over time.
Legal Aid Justice Center, 2015, Angela Ciolfi
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION

24. Bar charts are a classic for a reason—they’re often (usually?)
the best way to communicate data that isn’t right for a line
chart.
Bar Charts
Utah Legal Service’s performance reports
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION

25. There is virtually
nothing a pie chart
can do that a bar
chart can’t do better.
It’s reasonable as a
graphic way to show
two or maybe three
percentages of a
whole.
Pie Charts
UC Davis Student Demographics
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION

26. There’s nothing wrong with a simple table of numbers,
especially when communicating with a more sophisticated
audience.
Tables
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION

27. Scatter plots or bubble charts can effectively show the trend
of a lot of different data points.
Plots
From Microsoft Power BI bubble chart tutorial
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION

28. Maps can be a
powerful way to
represent data
geographically.
Maps
From PLOS article, Naming and Shaming for Conservation:
Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon, Elías Cisneros ,Sophie
Lian Zhou, Jan Börner
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION

29. A nifty data visualization that’s unfamiliar to most is very
unlikely to help you achieve your goal: Communicating your
point through data.
What About More Interesting Formats?
CHOOSING YOUR VISUALIZATION

30. Will Excel Work for Your
Needs?
4

31. Microsoft Excel Part of the Microsoft Office
Suite. $0-$30 per license for
nonprofits on TechSoup.
Installed on Windows, Mac,
or online.
WILL EXCEL WORK FOR YOU?

32. Nearly any kind of static
chart in any format is
possible … if you know
how to find it.
Highly Customizable
WILL EXCEL WORK FOR YOU?

33. Scatterplot
Many Types of New Charts
Bubble Chart
Box and Whiskers
Histogram
WILL EXCEL WORK FOR YOU?

34.  You want to just do one basic chart.
 You want to do a fair amount of exploration of data
over time.
 Your data is coming from several different sources
(especially sources other than Excel).
 You want to continuously refresh an online
visualization (like a dashboard).
 You want the user to be able to easily interact with the
visualization online.
When Would You Go Beyond Excel?
WILL EXCEL WORK FOR YOU?

35. Data Visualization
Specialists
5

36. Infogr.am
A reasonable possibility for creating good
looking charts based on 30+ chart
templates. Free to publish publicly online.
$19/month to download charts or make data
private. Online.
SPECIALISTS

37. Tableau
Download at www.tableau.com
Explore data, create good looking charts,
and share charts and dashboards online.
Free for one data source (which must be
made public). Otherwise $58 per license for
nonprofits on TechSoup. Installed on
Windows or Mac.
SPECIALISTS

38. Tableau has a lot of functionality to allow you to create robust
shared dashboards.
Tableau (cont.)
SPECIALISTS

39. Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft’s Power BI, an online cloud tool, is
quite comparable to Tableau. Free for data
visualization type use.
SPECIALISTS

40. Microsoft Power BI (cont.)
Power BI
also
provides
robust
shared
dashboards.
SPECIALISTS
SPECIALISTS

41. Also Consider…
There are a
number of
comparable
tools: Plot.ly,
Periscope,
Qlikview,
and many
more
Plot.ly
SPECIALISTS
SPECIALISTS

42. Tableau
Maps
Infogr.am
Tableau
SPECIALISTS
SPECIALISTS

43. Other Options
6

44. Illustration Software
Illustrator Photoshop
Serious creative license requires serious
design software. Illustrator and Photoshop
from Adobe’s Creative Suite are available
for a discount at TechSoup.
OTHER OPTIONS
OTHER OPTIONS

45. Coding
Languages—
Python, R, Stata
or SPSS—are
often what data
scientists use.
Statistical Coding Langauages
R Studio
SPECIALISTS
OTHER OPTIONS

46. If you’re considering complex online visualizations, there are
a number of charting coding libraries—such as D3 or Vega—
to speed up the process.
Online Coding Libraries
Vega
SPECIALISTS
OTHER OPTIONS

47. Questions?
NEXT COURSE

48. Stephanie Evergreen http://stephanieevergreen.com/
Enormously practical and useful info on data visualization—a
blog and two books.
Data Viz Tools http://dataviz.tools/
Want way, way, way more options? Here’s a usefully
structured list of 100s of tools to handle many different
aspects of data visualization.
Other Resources