Data exploration is about trying to gain an understanding of patterns and relationships hidden inside the data. Data visualization helps tremendously in this process. In fact, visual methods are frequently used to explain and communicate these patterns and relationships to an interested audience. It needs to be noted that data exploratory analysis and data explanatory analysis are two different things. Data explanatory analysis can only start after data exploratory analysis is completed. Our focus here is primarily data exploratory analysis and we want to discover and learn about the structure of data. Visual tools play a more dominant role in explanatory data analysis; however, these also play an equally important role during data exploration.
The following are the topics that we will be covering in this chapter:
- Sampling data
- Performing ad...