Mastering Data Visualization: Theory and Foundations [2022]
What you'll learn
- Learn to design effective data communication
- Improve your plots up to a professional level
- Learn to choose and design the appropriate plot for your purpose
- Learn to create compelling graphs that do not lie
- Learn to avoid the traps your data can fall into
- Learn to distinguish between good, bad and wrong visualization
- Learn the golden rules on Graphical Excellence, Integrity and Sophistication
- Learn the most common crimes in plotting to be able to avoid them!
Requirements
- There's no coding in this course. No programming skills required.
- No previous knowledge about data visualization is required.
- A perfect start for beginners, an interesting take for those with experience in Data Viz.
Description
Welcome to Mastering Data Visualization! In this course, you're going to learn about the Theory and Foundations of Data Visualization so that you can create amazing charts that are informative, true to the data, and communicatively effective.
Have you noticed there are more and more charts generated every day? If you turn on the TV, there's a bar chart telling you the evolution of COVID, if you go on Twitter, boom! a lot of line charts displaying the evolution of the price of gas. In newspapers, lots and lots of infographics telling you about the most recent discovery... The reason for that is that now we have lots of data, and the most natural way to communicate data is in visual form: that is, through Data Visualization. But, have you noticed all of the mistakes in those visualizations? I have to tell you, many of the charts that I see regularly have one problem or another. Maybe their color choices are confusing, they chose the wrong type of chart, or they are displaying data in a distorted way.
Actually, that happens because more and more professional roles now require to present data visually, but there's few training on how to do it correctly. This course aims to solve this gap. If there's one thing I can promise you is that, after completing this course, you'll be looking at charts at a completely different way. You will be able to distinguish good and bad visualizations, and, more importantly, you will be able to tell when a graph is lying and how to correct it.
If you need to analyze, present or communicate data professionally at some point, this course is a must. Actually, even if you don't need to actually draw plots for a living, this course is hugely useful. After all, we are all consumers of data visualizations, and we need to identify when charts are lying to us. (As an example, my mother attended one of my classes and now she's spotting mistakes in a lot of the media she sees everyday!)
I really encourage you to deepen your knowledge on Data Visualization. It's not a difficult topic, and we will start from the basics. You don't need any previous knowledge. I'll teach you everything you need to know along the way and we'll go straight to the point. No rambling. I really hope to see you in class!
Who this course is for:
- Programmers / Researchers / Designers that want to learn how to produce top-quality plots
- Anyone who has to present data at some point!
- Data Scientists
- Academic scientists having to publish in scientific journals
- Journalists / Data Journalists
- Communication experts
- Also the general public: you should know how graphs work because they're everywhere!
Instructor
![Clara Granell, PhD](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.7 Instructor Rating
- 307 Reviews
- 1,716 Students
- 2 Courses
Hi, I'm Clara!
I'm a Computer Scientist by training, a Complex Systems researcher by choice and a Data Visualization specialist by passion.
Over the many years of work in my career as a scientist, I've had to face the challenge of presenting very complex data in an understandable, easy and beautiful manner. In science, it is crucial to present your data in a way that it is understood, because the science behind it is often complicated enough, right?
So in my journey of learning how to communicate data in the most effective way, I had to learn the principles of human perception, the do's and don'ts of graphical design, the rules of graphical integrity and excellence... And then I had to choose what's the most appropriate tool to do the job: it had to be a powerful, yet flexible tool, and after trying many different plotting systems in many different programming languages, I finally commited to ggplot2. It took me a while to master all of it, but after doing it I found it was too good for me not to share it with the world.
So here I am, in Udemy, helping you become a better Data Visualization professional with my courses. See you around!