This guide is to provide information about data visualisation concept such as types and tools of visualisation, project examples, useful websites, etc. in conducting data visualisation projects. You are welcome to contact us if you would like to get advice or information in doing your research.
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Contact us
Email: dslab@lib.cuhk.edu.hk
Tel.: (852) 3943 9954
(Source: PBS Digital Studios. (2013). The Art of Data Visualization,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdSZJzb-aX8)
"Data Visualisation", in general, means the representation of data in a visual form such as a chart, diagram, map and infographic. The aims of data visualisation are to effectively communicate with the audience and facilitate further data analysis.
Data visualisation is indeed important for researchers. By using visual representations of information, researchers can present an enormous amount of data in clear, cohesive and quick ways. Readers can thus draw conclusions, and easily discover general patterns, outliers and exceptions from the information.
4 Major Phases of Data Visualisation Cycle
Researchers should pay attention to data interoperability: the ability of the data to work with different systems or products. There are some examples of open standard formats which can communicate with different systems:
|
Type of Data |
Format of Data |
|
Images |
PNG and SVG |
|
Web Pages |
HTML |
|
Tabular Data |
XML, CSV and JSON |
For most cases, data cleansing is a necessary process of detecting and eliminating errors, inconsistencies and duplications from data so as to enhance the quality of a database. After data cleansing, data transformation may be needed to convert data from one format into another. For example, researchers may need to convert KML data (a geo-data format used in Google Map) into JSON format (a geo-data format widely applicable to GIS software such as QGIS) for visualising data on a map.
Data visualisation techniques are widely applied to statistical analysis, text analysis and geospatial analysis. The advanced data visualisation methods can give researchers new insights.
|
Type of Analysis |
Examples of Data Visualisation Tools |
|
Statistical Analysis |
Graphs and Infographics |
|
Text Analysis |
Word Cloud, Word Tree, Collocation Graph |
|
Geospatial analysis |
Map, Network Graph |
To achieve different goals and functionalities, researchers can use different kinds of data visualisation tools. Some common types of graphs can be found in Data Visualisation Catalogue.
