It is not a co-incidence that all highly successful analyst have excellent data visualization skills. As a matter of fact, I think data visualization and creative story telling differentiates best of analysts from good analysts.
Be it design of a dashboard or a presentation after building an earth-shattering predictive model, visualization ends up being the face of all the hard work you have put in. Hence, it makes sense to spend time thinking about what is the best way of visualizing the data or insights from the data.
Sadly, not many analysts spend time on improving and thinking about visualization.
Look at it from this perspective, we sweat ourselves to get that extra percent of lift through our models or to make sure all the data flowing into the dashboards is right to the second and third decimal place. But, we usually spend a fraction of that time thinking about how this outcome would be presented and the impact it can create.
In this article, I am listing down the books, which have helped me improve immensely in data visualization. Further, some of these are resources for lifetime as I still continue to refer them, when I am stressing my grey cells over how to create that extra impact through my work.
For beginners:
For advanced readers:
In my list of books to be read: Visual Thinking by Colin Ware. I have read some great reviews about the book, but have not been able to read it till now. It’s on my reading list.
If you have not read these books, please find them and read! On the other hand, if you have any other books which are not there in the list, please suggest them in the comments below.
If you like what you just read & want to continue your analytics learning, subscribe to our emails or like our facebook page.
You can also read this article on our Mobile APP

These books seem great! Alas, I see they are expensive. Does anyone know if they are available in some library in Delhi?
Some of these are available in IIT Delhi library, if you have access to it.
Thanks,
Kunal
Oh dear! I suppose Central Library @ IIT-Delhi is accessible only for current and ex-students. I’ll call them and confirm, nevertheless. Any idea if the British Council keeps books on Analytics?
Very useful indeed! Thanks!