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4 Data Visualization Tools To Transform Your Data Storytelling

Although Tableau is great, it is not the only option.

Photo by Jason Coudriet on Unsplash
Photo by Jason Coudriet on Unsplash

At first glance, Data Science always appears to be an intricate field – or maybe I should say a collection of fields. It very broad vague, and one can argue complex. But, the truth is, data science can be defined very simply using one sentence.

Data science is the field of interpreting data collected from different resources into useful information. Or in other words, it is all about listening and translating the story some data is trying to deliver.

I like to think of data science as the art of telling your data’s story. The better you are at storytelling, the more compelling this story will be. That being said, finding the story your data is telling is not always easy. Actually, it is never easy. One way to ease up the process of finding the story is through data visualization.

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Data visualization is more than just a step of your data science project; it is the core of it. However, often, developers don’t want to spend a long time designing visualization. That’s why tools like Tableau offer developers a great choice to spend more time on their code yet produce valuable, clear, compelling data visualizations.

Tableau is perhaps the most well-known and used data visualization tool; it’s robust, potent, and can be used to generate any type of visualization you may think of. However, Tableau is not the only great data visualization tool out there.

This article will go through 4 data visualization tools, both free and paid, that will help you create eye-catching visualizations and allow you to tell your data’s story the best way you can.

№1: Google Data Studio

Our first tool on the list is the Google Data Studio. The Google Data Studio is a part of the Google Marketing Platform that is designed to help developers build, design, and use interactive, compelling data visualizations and data dashboards that can be shared among team members as well as clients and companies.

The Google Data Studio allows you to create a visualization for different datasets at the same time, it is designed for teams to access the same data and dashboards, and it is free of charge. The Google Data Studio can be integrated with other Google products such as Google Analytics, Ads, Google cloud, and BigQuery to create powerful, robust pairings that can be used for various data exploration tasks.

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№2: Datawrapper

Creating and designing compelling data visualization is an art form in itself, but it also needs to be simple to create for people with no strong artistic skills. The second tool on our list is Datawrapper. This tool has been designed by artists, graphic designers, developers, and journalists. It was designed to be fast to learn, flexible to use, and powerful enough to create beautiful, simple to comprehend visualizations.

Datawrapper is a fully web-based service that offers both paid plans and free plans for developers of different needs. The free plan allows you to generate 10,000 charts which give you the time to decide whether this tool is for you or not. Datawrapper also offers some classes and tutorials to teach you the most efficient way to use the platform and create the best visualizations possible.

№3: Infogram

A little bit over a decade ago, a new tool for creating presentations entered the market, a way to create a stunning presentation full of movement that is guaranteed to catch your audience’s attention. That tool is Prezi. That tool then extended to include other services that focus on creating compelling visualizations. The tool that made our list today is one of my favorite tools of all time, Infogram.

Infogram is an easy-to-use tool with an amicable interface. It offers more than 30 types of charts and visualizations that can be customized from A to Z. Infogram also give you the option of creating data dashboards with premade templates for those of us who don’t have much time. Infogram offered both a free version with limited options and a paid version with full access for 19$/month.

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№4: FusionCharts

Last but not least on the list is FusionCharts. FusionCharts is a JavaScript-based tool that allows you to create versatile data dashboards for web and mobile users. FisionCharts more than 150 chart types and more than 1000 map types. To make the tool more robust, it can be integrated with other JavaScript frameworks like React and jQuery and other Programming languages like Python’s (Django) and Ruby on Rails.

If you don’t want to write code to generate visualizations, FusionCharts also offer a ready-to-use code for all the charts and maps included to ease up the process of embedding, designing, and creating your visualizations.

Final Thoughts

As a data scientist, the main set of tasks we are required to complete is to successfully interpret the story the data is telling, extract insights from that story, and then use them to make better decisions or predict future data. These tasks are the core of all data science branches, from simple regression to natural language processing, neural networks, computer version, and deep learning.

The best way to find and tell the data’s story is to visualize it. Data visualization is not just another step of any data science project. It is rather one of the essential steps that could make or break your entire project. If you used the wrong data visualization technique during your data exploration step, then you may miss some essential patterns, trends, or insights.

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And if you spend so many hours developing and training your model and at the end, you visualized your results in a dull, undescriptive approach, your clients may dismiss your results and struggle to find the true meaning of your work. That’s why data visualization should be one of the main skills every data scientist should work on.

Luckily, there are many tools there that you can use to create compelling, beautiful, meaningful visualization and data dashboards. These tools will be a great addition to your data science tool built and can help you build better, more robust projects.


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