Название: The Golden Age of Data Visualization: How Did We Get Here?
Автор: Kimbal Marriott
Издательство: CRC Press
Год: 2025
Страниц: 375
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 36.1 MB

We are living in the Golden Age of Data Visualization. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how we increasingly use data visualizations to make sense of the world. Business analysts fill their presentations with charts, journalists use infographics to engage their readers, we rely on the dials and gauges on our household appliances, and we use mapping apps on our smartphones to find our way.

This book explains how and why this has happened. It details the evolution of information graphics, the kinds of graphics at the core of data visualization―maps, diagrams, charts, scientific and medical images―from prehistory to the present day. It explains how the cultural context, production and presentation technologies, and data availability have shaped the history of data visualization. It considers the perceptual and cognitive reasons why data visualization is so effective and explores the little-known world of tactile graphics―raised-line drawings used by people who are blind. The book also investigates the way visualization has shaped our modern world. The European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution relied on maps and technical and scientific drawings, and graphics influence how we think about abstract concepts like time and social connection.

Tableau was one of the first commercially available visual analytics tools. Released in May 2003, Tableau allowed business and government analysts to create an almost endless variety of visualizations by dragging and dropping data fields onto the tool’s main panel. They could effortlessly create standard visualizations like choropleth maps and bar charts or craft their own custom chart. The resulting visualizations were interactive. When the analyst moved their mouse over a graphic element, they saw details of the underlying data. They could zoom, pan and scroll across larger visualizations. And they could sort and reorder their data or use checkboxes and slider bars to filter it. Tableau made it easy for anyone to explore data and see trends, patterns and anomalies. And once you found something, Tableau made it simple to publish visualizations on the web.

This book is written for data visualization researchers and professionals and anyone interested in data visualization and the way we use graphics to understand and think about the world.