ABSTRACT
Infographics are like glasses, says Alberto Cairo, who teaches data visualization at the University of Miami. If you take your glasses off, everything is blurry, but with your glasses on, everything comes into focus and makes sense. That analogy describes the impact of effective data visualizations. This chapter discusses various types of charts (such as pie, line and bar/column) and maps (including locator, thematic and symbol maps), and it explains how to know which type is right for your data. It includes Lena Groeger’s “seeing” versus “thinking” framework for optimizing graphics for an audience. We then provide an overview of free tools for creating data visualizations, such as Infogram, Datawrapper, Flourish and Tableau. The chapter discusses how to choose the right colors, fonts and the size for your graphic. Using Flourish and real-world data, we will walk through the process of making a variety of charts and maps. At the end of the chapter are exercises in which readers match datasets with the appropriate chart for map types. In addition, we point readers to various datasets and data visualization software to have them create data visualizations.
