Oh No! One more article on dimensionality reduction! But wait, this is different. There are many articles that explain dimensionality reduction from a technical point of view. However, I will focus on how you can use the power of dimensionality reduction in innovative ways. You will also better appreciate the awesome power of dimensionality reduction as I will focus on its use instead of the technical details.
I will take you through how to use the power of dimensionality reduction for Data Storytelling.
Great storytellers will tell you the importance of figuring out the storyline of the narrative is one of the most important story-telling tasks of storytelling. It requires figuring out the beginning, middle, and end.

So you may ask what has that to do with Dimensionality Reduction? Well, the answer is that
dimensionality reduction can help you determine the beginning, middle and end of a data story
One of the best ways to illustrate this using dataset on one of the best stories in modern times…Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). So Avengers Assemble! This dataset is about each and every superhero in MCU and their superpower. This dataset is too big to illustrate, so here is just a sample view.

Now let’s say you had to use this dataset and tell a data story about the Marvel Characters. It is a huge dataset with almost 200 characters. You might be surprised to know that MCU has identified almost about 175 superpowers. Each character can have one or more superpowers. So this means you are facing the challenge of looking at 200 rows * 175 columns.
So how do you figure out how to start, middle, and end your data story? Dimensionality reduction can help to crush this huge data into a 1D storyline.

Here is the result of dimensionality reduction.

Once you see all characters arranged in a single line, you start feeling the superpower of being in control! You do not feel intimidated by the 175 dimensions.
Each dot represents a character. Let us see what are these characters. We can also superimpose a radar chart which will also give additional information about the super-powers about these characters. Let us start with the first dot, as shown in the visualization below.

We see here that that left most dot corresponds to the character Rocket Raccoon. You also see a radar chart that indicates the superpowers. We see that Rocket Raccoon has a superpower which is animal-oriented power as well as a weapons master.
Now let us navigate through the other initial dots. You observe that these dots correspond to Black Panther and Spiderman.

So it is very clear that the dimensionality reduction has placed all characters with animal-oriented power at the beginning of the line. This is really awesome and we see that dimensionality reduction has not chosen some random characters to be at the beginning of the line. This is already giving us some hints on how to structure our data storytelling. We can start with the importance of animal power-based character in the MCU.
Now let us focus on the middle of the line. We see the character Scarlet Witch. We can observe that she has super-powers of Teleportation and Magic.

Let us observe some other characters situated in the middle of the line. You will see characters such as Thor and Doctor Strange.

This means that dimensionality reduction has chosen characters with powers such as teleportation and magic to be in the middle of the line. This is really magical! Our storyline is starting to make sense. We can start with the importance of animal-oriented powers and then move to characters with magic and teleportation powers!
Now let us see what is in the last part of the character’s storyline. We observe Captain Marvel and she has multiple superpowers such as Teleportation, Magic, Energy Manipulation, and Omnilingualism. For the curious, Omnilingualism, is the power to speak, understand and decipher any and all languages.

Let us observe some other characters at the end of the line. We see Thanos and Odin, both of who have multiple superpowers. So dimensionality reduction has put characters with multiple superpowers at the end of the line.

So our data storyline would look something like this
Start with describing the importance of animal-oriented power in MCU and illustrate with examples such as Black Panther and Spiderman.
Then talk about how teleportation and magic play a central role in fascinating the audience. Give illustration with characters such as Scarlet Witch, Thor, Doctor Strange.
End the story with characters with multiple superpowers such as Captain Marvel and Thanos.
So we have gone from intimidating-looking 175 columns data to a very elegant story-line that makes sense and is coherent. Thanks to the awesome super-power of dimensionality reduction!
So next time, you have an intimidating-looking file with large columns, you can convert it into an elegant story and wow your audience.
Website
You can experience some of the techniques in this article on my website – https://experiencedatascience.com
Please subscribe to stay informed whenever I release a new story. https://pranay-dave9.medium.com/subscribe
You can also join Medium with my referral link https://pranay-dave9.medium.com/membership
Youtube Channel
You can see video of this article on my YouTube channel. https://www.youtube.com/c/DataScienceDemonstrated