Lesson 1

Introduction to Visual Analytics

Mentor: Dr. Kam Tin Seong

Associate Professor of Information Systems (Practice)

tskam@smu.edu.sg

Version 1.12.0

Last updated: 22/08/2019, 11:00pm

What will you learn from this lesson?

• Motivation of Visual Analytics

• What Visual Analytics is

• Visual Analytics in History

• Visual Analytics Toolkits

• Visualising and Analysing Univariate Data

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Lesson 1: Introduction to Visual Analytics

 

Motivation of Visual Analytics

• The First Crime of Data Visualisation

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Source: MINISTRY OF TRADE AND INDUSTRY

STRAITS TIMES GRAPHICS

Motivation of Visual Analytics

• Data rich, information poor

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• The impact of volunteered data

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• The impact of data.gov initiative

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• The impact of smart nation vision

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• Everyday data analysts

  • Non-professional statistician

  • Uses spreadsheet as main analytical tool

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• Excel table : great hammer, lousy screwdriver

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• Charts should work with you, not against you

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

Data analysis

without

data visualisation

is no

data analysis

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• When statistics failed!

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Motivation of Visual Analytics

• Analytical graphics reveal the truth

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What is Visual Analytics?

• The science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces

• A halfway house: a stopping place on the path from data to decision

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Detecting the expected,

discovering the unexpected

What is Visual Analytics?

• Visual Analytics’ greatest strength is its use for sense-making

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When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth

- Sherlock Holmes

What is Visual Analytics?

• Visual Analytics Framework

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What is Visual Analytics?

• Conceptual view of Visual Analytics

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What is Visual Analytics?

• Visual presentation using Excel chart

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What is Visual Analytics?

• Visual exploration using JMP chart

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What is Visual Analytics?

• Visual Analytics as a knowledge discovery process

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What is Visual Analytics?

• The science of Visual Analytics

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Milestones in the history of Visual Analytics

• William Playfair (22 September 1759 – 11 February 1823)

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The value of Visual Analytics

• Florence Nightingale (12 May 1820 – 13 August 1910)

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The value of Visual Analytics

• The source of cholera outbreak in Soho, England. (John Snow, 1854).

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Visual Analytics toolkits

• Commercial-off-the-shelf
  • Stand alone
  • Data visualisation developer toolkits
• Open-source
  • Stand alone
  • Data visualisation API library

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Visual Analytics toolkits

• Commercial-off-the-shelf

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Visual Analytics toolkits

• Commercial-off-the-shelf

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Visual Analytics toolkits

• Introducing Tableau

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Programmable Data Visualisation Library

• Javascript

  • D3.js (https://d3js.org/)

  • VEGA (https://vega.github.io/vega/)

• Python

  • Bokeh (http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/)

  • Maplotlib (http://matplotlib.org/)

  • Plotly (https://plot.ly/python/) 

• R

  • ggplot2 (https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/)

  • R Shiny (https://shiny.rstudio.com/)

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Visualisng and Analysing Univariate Data

• Distribution analysis

  • Part-to-whole

  • Statistical distribution

• Deviation analysis

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Visualisng and Analysing Univariate Data

• Characteristics of univariate data

  • Categorical

  • Continuous

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Distribution analysis of categorical data

• Save the Pies for Dessert

  • Pie charts force us to compare either 2-D areas formed by each slice or the angles formed by each where the slices meet in the centre

  • Segment too small to be labelled

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Distribution analysis of categorical data

• Bar chart came to the rescue

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Distribution analysis of categorical data

• Pareto chart

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Distribution analysis of continuous data

• Beyond single descriptive statistic

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Distribution analysis of continuous data

• Introducing Boxplot

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Distribution analysis of continuous data

• Interpretation of a Boxplot

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Distribution analysis of continuous data

•  Comparing multiple boxplot

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Deviation Analysis

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• Examining how one or more sets of values deviate from a reference set of values

Deviation Analysis

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• A Tale of Deviation Charts

Deviation Analysis

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• Working with reference line

Deviation Analysis

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• Working with reference region

Data Visualisation Classic

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Data Visualisation Classic

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Highly recommended blogs

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Lesson 1:Introduction to Visual Analytics