Data and information visualization

Data and information visualization (data viz/vis or info viz/vis) is the practice of designing and creating graphic or visual representations of quantitative and qualitative data and information with the help of static, dynamic or interactive visual items. These visualizations are intended to help a target audience visually explore and discover, quickly understand, interpret and gain important insights into otherwise difficult-to-identify structures, relationships, correlations, local and global patterns, trends, variations, constancy, clusters, outliers and unusual groupings within data. When intended for the public to convey a concise version of information in an engaging manner, it is typically called infographics. Data visualization is concerned with presenting sets of primarily quantitative raw data in a schematic form, using imagery. The visual formats used in data visualization includes charts and graphs, geospatial maps, figures, correlation matrices, percentage gauges, etc.. Information visualization deals with multiple, large-scale and complicated datasets which contain quantitative data, as well as qualitative, and primarily abstract information, and its goal is to add value to raw data, improve the viewers' comprehension, reinforce their cognition and help derive insights and make decisions as they navigate and interact with the graphical display. Visual tools used include maps for location based data; hierarchical organisations of data; displays that prioritise relationships such as Sankey diagrams; flowcharts, timelines. In addition, Narrative visualization is a method that uses visual elements such as charts, graphs, maps and the like to convey data or information. This approach blends data analysis, storytelling, and visualization to present information through structured narrative flows- using visuals not just to present statistics, but to tell a story through data. Its goal is to help people identify trends, patterns, and relationships in data through a compelling story-driven visual experience. Emerging technologies like virtual, augmented and mixed reality have the potential to make information visualization more...