Week 4: Data Visualization
So far we have covered the basics of creating an infographic with Canva as well as a dashboard using Tableau. I did not emphasize it very much last week but Tableau is a great platform for creating dashboards.
This week, I watched David McCandless's TED Talk, "The Beauty of Data Visualization." For starters, McCandless mentioned something in this video that really got me thinking about something I have been noticing for the past couple of weeks now. He said, "data is the new oil," and I found this quite interesting. Oil was and still is one of the most important goods that everyone wants and everyone needs, and only a few had. But, this is as true anymore. Now, people need data, information, and technology, and this is what will be the characteristic of a developed nation in the coming years. Oil prices will no longer be one of the most talked about topics in the news, but rather it will be the price of data and who can think of the most innovative way to analyze and present it.
The world is changing so much faster than people can comprehend and it is opening up endless opportunities, both good and bad. The fact that software such as Canva and Tableau exist today, is something that people could not have imagined a few years back. The way that work is done is changing, becoming simpler every single day. The problem is becoming learning how to manage these new technologies and making sure that data is being shared and used in an ethical way.
This leads right into another part that I found incredibly thought-provoking from David McCandless's TED Talk; his idea of questioning the data. At one point he talks about the U.S. military budget and shows how at first it may seem like the U.S. is an absolute power with a larger defense budget than all other nations combined, but then he integrates that single total with other factors like total economy size, GDP, and the number of soldiers. When this information is incorporated, the data begins to look very different. Other countries like China and Korea actually ended up on top in these cases. This adds on to the idea of context that we talked about last week. Data can be misleading if there is not enough context around it. For example, companies can take advantage of this misuse of data and manipulate the message that the viewer receives in advertising. They could perform a study saying that their new product will make you live 10 years longer, but they forgot to leave out the fact that they only tested their product on people who also cut foods with high fructose corn syrup out of their diet completely in addition to taking their so-called, "miracle pill."
In addition to making sure that you portray the data in the proper way, you also have to understand the power that data has in the world today. People are on information overload right now and making sure that people are not misinformed is vital to consider when creating dashboards. Never stop questioning the data, always make sure that all necessary pieces of information are included to get the bigger picture.
This can be an intimidating task, but Tableau is a very useful tool to aid you in this process! Although, it can be a little intimidating at first. There are a lot of options and functions that can be incredibly confusing to the beginner. I will admit that I have had a hard time understanding how it works. Given that, I will keep messing around with it throughout these next couple of weeks, and I encourage whoever is reading this to do the same! I will be attempting to create my own dashboard from a random set of data that I find. I have learned so much already and I cannot wait to learn more!
Wish me luck!
This week, I watched David McCandless's TED Talk, "The Beauty of Data Visualization." For starters, McCandless mentioned something in this video that really got me thinking about something I have been noticing for the past couple of weeks now. He said, "data is the new oil," and I found this quite interesting. Oil was and still is one of the most important goods that everyone wants and everyone needs, and only a few had. But, this is as true anymore. Now, people need data, information, and technology, and this is what will be the characteristic of a developed nation in the coming years. Oil prices will no longer be one of the most talked about topics in the news, but rather it will be the price of data and who can think of the most innovative way to analyze and present it.
The world is changing so much faster than people can comprehend and it is opening up endless opportunities, both good and bad. The fact that software such as Canva and Tableau exist today, is something that people could not have imagined a few years back. The way that work is done is changing, becoming simpler every single day. The problem is becoming learning how to manage these new technologies and making sure that data is being shared and used in an ethical way.
This leads right into another part that I found incredibly thought-provoking from David McCandless's TED Talk; his idea of questioning the data. At one point he talks about the U.S. military budget and shows how at first it may seem like the U.S. is an absolute power with a larger defense budget than all other nations combined, but then he integrates that single total with other factors like total economy size, GDP, and the number of soldiers. When this information is incorporated, the data begins to look very different. Other countries like China and Korea actually ended up on top in these cases. This adds on to the idea of context that we talked about last week. Data can be misleading if there is not enough context around it. For example, companies can take advantage of this misuse of data and manipulate the message that the viewer receives in advertising. They could perform a study saying that their new product will make you live 10 years longer, but they forgot to leave out the fact that they only tested their product on people who also cut foods with high fructose corn syrup out of their diet completely in addition to taking their so-called, "miracle pill."
In addition to making sure that you portray the data in the proper way, you also have to understand the power that data has in the world today. People are on information overload right now and making sure that people are not misinformed is vital to consider when creating dashboards. Never stop questioning the data, always make sure that all necessary pieces of information are included to get the bigger picture.
This can be an intimidating task, but Tableau is a very useful tool to aid you in this process! Although, it can be a little intimidating at first. There are a lot of options and functions that can be incredibly confusing to the beginner. I will admit that I have had a hard time understanding how it works. Given that, I will keep messing around with it throughout these next couple of weeks, and I encourage whoever is reading this to do the same! I will be attempting to create my own dashboard from a random set of data that I find. I have learned so much already and I cannot wait to learn more!
Wish me luck!
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