It takes 200-500 milliseconds for the eye to transmit and the brain to process the pre-attentive property of visual stimulus (that’s much faster than how the brain can process spreadsheet data). This phenomenon is known as “pre-attentive processing.” It’s subconscious and fast. Not only does visual processing dominate sensory inputs, the amount of data and the speed with which we process are far higher than we are aware of. In this scenario, the reordering of categories significantly improved the presentation of data. And on the right, since countries and meat production do not have a natural order, many other matrices can be produced-including the example shown-which provided much more clarity. Bertin regarded these as “useless.” In the middle-by employing matrix visualization, high-level patterns become more immediately visible. In the example below, the pie charts show the production of various kinds of meat in several countries. His work was crucial because he found that in order to present information intuitively, clearly, and efficiently, visual perception operated according to rules and patterns that could be followed.īertin studied the effectiveness of different types of charts. Their methodology and effectiveness increased significantly in the second half of the 20th century with the publication of Jacques Bertin’s book The Semiology of Graphics. Over the years, using quantitative graphs became more widespread. He is credited with having invented line and bar charts, and later the pie chart and circle graph. That system was improved when William Playfair pioneered graphical forms as we know them today. The idea of presenting quantitative data graphically came about in the 18th century when Rene Descartes invented a two-dimensional coordinate system to display values for mathematical operations. But what is behind the power of data visualization? Historical Context of Data Visualization Designĭata visualization has a long history and made significant advances between the 17th and 19th centuries. Effectively communicating data can prove challenging, and though graphs can help us understand complex data and even see it from a new perspective, when it comes to properly transmitting a message to an audience or making business decisions based on data, visualization may be a pivotal way to accomplish it. Is our brain uniquely built to recognize patterns and connections? Today, we live in a golden age of data visualization. The earliest example of data visualization is probably a map from around 27,000 years ago, and for a long time, it was rare to see data visualizations for anything other than geography. People have used visuals to help tell stories and illustrate answers to essential questions for thousands of years. But what is the best way to do it? An understanding of human perception and cognition can help designers do it effectively. Data visualization is a great way to tell a story about data.
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