Visualization

Visualization is the graphical representation of data, information, or concepts intended to communicate insights, support reasoning, and aid decision making. By translating abstract numbers into visual forms, it leverages perceptual processes to reveal patterns, trends, correlations, and anomalies that may be difficult to discern in raw data.

Broadly, visualization is categorized into data visualization, information visualization, and scientific visualization. Data visualization uses charts, plots, maps, and dashboards to summarize numeric data. Information visualization encodes abstract structures such as networks or hierarchies. Scientific visualization renders physical phenomena, using techniques like volume rendering or surface models. Visualizations can be static or interactive, and 2D or 3D.

Effective visualization relies on careful data preparation, appropriate encoding of information (for example by position, length, angle, area, color, and shape), and transparent labeling. Design goals include clarity, accuracy, and accessibility, while avoiding misleading scales, clutter, or cognitive biases. Interactivity, where available, supports exploration, filtering, and comparison.

History and applications: Early data displays include John Snow’s cholera map and Florence Nightingale’s coxcomb diagrams, with later advances by Minard and others shaping modern statistical graphics. Today, visualization is integral to science, engineering, business analytics, journalism, healthcare, environmental monitoring, and policy making, often via dashboards, reports, and interactive web visualizations.