Rewriting various forms of visual representation in history helps to grasp their cognitive and cultural significance.
Data visualization is far from new. It has a long tradition: geometry of statistics, spatialization of quantitative data, important surfaces and relationships, symbolism of colors, lines, hatching, etc.
Combining Information and Facts
While cartography is certainly one of the main forms of structured visualization, it distinguished itself with encyclopedia and enlightenment.
Subsequently, numerous visualizations were introduced that are still relevant today, including line chart and bar charts in 1786 or pie and circular charts in 1801.
This diversity exploded in the 2000s with spectacular visualizations produced from large volumes of data, for example animated bubble charts, to set the visual trends of our society.
In France, graphical semiology was established in the 1960s, which analyzes and predicts the formatting of data according to different matrices. This French current remained parallel to the American one.
Data visualization is now a techno-scientific field in its own right, with applications for decision support in medicine, marketing, economics as well as politics.
In November 2014, Paris hosted a global scientific event called IEEE VIS, which brought together three conferences.
The international research community, especially computer science, came together to compare rendering systems and visualization tools.
New Deals and Interactions
If data visualizations have proliferated today, it's because of computer capabilities and accessibility of screens. The ubiquity of a more synthetic visual regime complements the traditional more analytic text regime. Thus, abstract data becomes new entities to be understood and explored.
Finding One-way Solutions to Complex Problems
Finding solutions is easier with a growing number of data visualization tools that make them tangible. Information visualizations that have been corrected because they were previously in print become interactive at every stage.
Data from a wide variety of sources shows that: Government agencies, survey firms, non-government or private companies, data scientists, computer scientists, and mathematicians work in this field. By them, data is entered, extracted, processed and transformed.
This apparently rationalized and standardized process is associated with iterative loops, adjustments.
Next comes visualization with graphic artists and designers. Depending on the situation, computer graphics are stable. They show information or are animated with interactive videos.
Interaction disrupts the relationship with the world. Because it allows us to interact with it to gain more information, ideas or cross-check. It establishes another cognitive relationship with the data.
In particular, filters and functions aim to show or relate different aspects of the image presented for consultation. This visual reinforces the heuristic nature of informational works.
data accessibility example
why is data accessibility important
data accessibility issues
how to measure data accessibility
data accessibility in healthcare
data consistency
From Complexity to Simplicity
If we always used visualization tools to make decisions, we could better understand how the world works and even create new matrices of possible choices.
In particular, the current context, the replication of big data and data pools requires all this information produced by the complexity of the digital and physical worlds to be made tangible and usable.
To tackle the immeasurable, data visualization can be a powerful tool for finding simple solutions to the challenges we face.
