Design  / 

Guides for Visualizing Reality

We like to complain about how data is messy, not in the right format, and how parts don’t make sense. Reality is complicated though. Data comes from the realities. Here are several guides to help with visualizing these realities, which seem especially important these days.

Visualizing Incomplete and Missing Data

We love complete and nicely formatted data. That’s not what we get a lot of the time.

Visualizing Outliers

Step 1: Figure out why the outlier exists in the first place. Step 2: Choose from these visualization options to show the outlier.

Visualizing Differences

Focus on finding or displaying contrasting points, and some visual methods are more helpful than others.

Visualizing Patterns on Repeat

Things have a way of repeating themselves, and it can be useful to highlight these patterns in data.

 

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Favorites

The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2014

It’s always tough to pick my favorite visualization projects. Nevertheless, I gave it a go.

When You Will Die

With absolute certainty, you will die. When will it happen? That is a trickier question. But we can run simulations to explore the possibilities.

How You Will Die

So far we’ve seen when you will die and how other people tend to die. Now let’s put the two together to see how and when you will die, given your sex, race, and age.

Reviving the Statistical Atlas of the United States with New Data

Due to budget cuts, there is no plan for an updated atlas. So I recreated the original 1870 Atlas using today’s publicly available data.