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Writer's pictureHendrik Speelman

The importance of data visualizations

We live in a world that is overwhelmed with data. Petabytes of data are collected and analyzed on a daily basis in the business world. Imagine all this data into one single file which contains raw and unorganized data. Nobody wants to look to that, right?


Context

With the way our brain works, it is essential that all of this raw and unorganized data is visualized. Our brain is wired in a way that, even in our daily life, we look for patterns. Pattern recognition is an ability of the human brain to not only find patterns but figure out in a logical way what those patterns suggest about what will happen next.


Let's have a look at the following picture:

In a blink of a second, you probably noticed it's a tiger. Even though the picture is blurred, the pattern recognition of your brain tells you it's a tiger. We do the same when we look at data. We try to find a possible pattern and try to find out what will happen next.


Why?

In most of our daily jobs, we can only accept that data is a fundamental element to drive our decisions. Without data there is no material to feed a visualization. Without a visualization, the value of data will be unfulfilled.


Visualizations give us a way to interpret and to make a picture of all this data. A picture which will be worth more than a thousand words. Often these visuals are created in form of a line chart, bar chart, or even a matrix. Visualizing data makes it more natural for humans to understand certain patterns, trends, or new insights. All of this with the help of our evolved brain which has the pattern recognition ability.


When these visualizations are created, they will help you and your business to communicate information which is fast, understandable, and efficient. With this form of communication, companies know how to identify where action needs to be taken and give stakeholders, business owners, and decision-makers a way to use the data as a strategic advantage over competitors.


Conclusion

We need data visualization in our data projects because our brain is not able to process so much data and turn it into something understandable. We need visualizations that will communicate our data findings which we can use as a strategic advantage. With visualizations, we can identify patterns and trends to gain insight and become more data-driven.


Sources:

  • Kirk, A. (2019). Data Visualisation (2nd edition). SAGE.

  • Pattern recognition. (z.d.). C8 Sciences. https://www.c8sciences.com/about/8ccc/pattern-recognition/


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