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:
1. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte:
2. Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics by Nathan Yau:
3. The Wall Street Journal Guide to Information Graphics: The Dos & Don’ts of Presenting Data, Facts, & Figures by Dona M. Wong:
4. Show me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten by Stephen Few:
5. Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis by Stephen Few:
6. Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few:
For advanced readers:
7. Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte:
8. Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte:
Cartographies of time: A history of the timeline by Daniel Rosenberg & Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, networks, maps by Jaques Bertin – Both these books are classic and give you a good perspective on how the field has evolved. You might still find some nuggets of gold here!
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.
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4 thoughts on "Must read books on data visualization"
Sheeba says: September 17, 2013 at 5:58 am
These books seem great! Alas, I see they are expensive. Does anyone know if they are available in some library in Delhi?Kunal Jain says: September 17, 2013 at 6:45 am
Some of these are available in IIT Delhi library, if you have access to it. Thanks, KunalSheeba says: September 17, 2013 at 10:46 am
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?Anjali Samani says: September 20, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Very useful indeed! Thanks!