Data visualization is a tool that can be used in many ways. As you've seen while building examples throughout the book, data visualization is sometimes used to communicate information in a novel or interesting way; sometimes data visualization provides clarity, other times it's just used to make cool things.
Regardless of whether you're a journalist wanting to highlight a change in GDP, a scientist needing to communicate the results of an experiment, or a software engineer looking to integrate visualization into a product, chances are that you'll want data visualization that is clear, concise, and does not mislead. Although the examples in this chapter will mainly be from a news media context, many of the points we'll discuss apply similarly to data visualization in general.
In this chapter, we'll look at a few general principles to keep in mind while building data visualizations and I'll give some examples of good data visualization as well....