Session 12: Introduction to Data Visualization

Graphical (or pictorial) presentations of data have become an almost essential part of journalistic practice. Data visualization helps us see patterns in data, and is an important tool for finding stories. Also, outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, and FiveThirtyEight are publishing data visualizations that push the very idea of storytelling, creating new data-driven ways to inform and entertain. In this edition of At Home with the Brown Institute, we will discuss basic data visualizations — guiding you through the types of graphics popular among news outlets. We will then get practical, introducing you to a powerful tool for making graphics, ggplot. Again, our language of choice is Python. Along the way, we will also help you think critically about visualizations, making you a better consumer of data graphics.

You can find the slides here and the Google Colab Notebook file here.