Better Data Visualizations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks

by Jonathan Schwabish (Author)

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in Library & Information Science

ISBN-13: 978-0231193115

ISBN-10: 0231193114

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Now more than ever, content must be visual if it is to travel far. Readers everywhere are overwhelmed with a flow of data, news, and text. Visuals can cut through the noise and make it easier for readers to recognize and recall information. Yet many researchers were never taught how to present their work visually.

This book details essential strategies to create more effective data visualizations. Jonathan Schwabish walks readers through the steps of creating better graphs and how to move beyond simple line, bar, and pie charts. Through more than five hundred examples, he demonstrates the do’s and don’ts of data visualization, the principles of visual perception, and how to make subjective style decisions around a chart’s design. Schwabish surveys more than eighty visualization types, from histograms to horizon charts, ridgeline plots to choropleth maps, and explains how each has its place in the visual toolkit. It might seem intimidating, but everyone can learn how to create compelling, effective data visualizations. This book will guide you as you define your audience and goals, choose the graph that best fits for your data, and clearly communicate your message.

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Editorial Reviews

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An excellent primer for anyone who wants to display quantitative information clearly and powerfully. -- Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley, and former U.S. secretary of labor

This is an immensely practical guide to more effective communication through data visualization. From basic principles, to an extensive taxonomy of visualization types, to developing a style guide, this will be an invaluable and accessible read for anyone who needs to turn data into information. -- Mara Averick, RStudio

Too often, good data falls prey to bad or lazy visualizations. At last, an indispensable guide for presenting your work intelligibly and compellingly. -- DJ Patil, former U.S. chief data scientist

For many of us, it’s tough to understand data without visuals. But visualizing data is hard! This book is the authoritative guide. It’s terrific―and spectacularly useful. -- Cass R. Sunstein, Harvard Law School, and author of Too Much Information

A stellar variety and number of visualizations are included in these pages, an enjoyable-to-read encyclopedia of graphs. Jonathan Schwabish provides practical considerations for when to use which visual and thoughtful design guidelines in this excellent resource for those who work and communicate with data. You’ll be inspired and―as promised―learn better data visualization! -- Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, author of Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Navigating the myriad chart types available today can be a daunting experience. This book provides you with not only a guiding light but also an important foundation in the burgeoning field of data visualization. You will want to keep its set of principles and guidelines right next to you in your next project. -- Manuel Lima, author of The Book of Circles: Visualizing Spheres of Knowledge

Better Data Visualizations carefully teaches the reader when to use which type of visualization and why. This engaging book takes you from the basics to the entire breadth of today’s visualization methods. There are hundreds of clear, elegant, and varied visualizations to give you ideas for your own work. -- Max Roser, founder and director, Our World in Data

Better Data Visualizations is a practical guide to a large catalogue of chart types. No other book introduces the reader to specific chart types with such detail and finesse. It is an excellent resource for students, analysts, and researchers alike. -- Alberto Cairo, author of How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter About Visual Information

Not only is the book well designed from fonts to white space, it’s also well written and enjoyable to read. ― Technical Communication

About the Author

Jonathan Schwabish is an economist and writer, teacher, and creator of policy-relevant data visualizations. He helps nonprofits, research institutions, and governments at all levels improve how they communicate their work and findings to their colleagues, partners, clients, and constituents. He is the author of Better Presentations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks (Columbia, 2016).

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Columbia University Press (February 9, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0231193114
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0231193115
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.5 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #14,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1 in Library & Information Science (Books)
- #3 in Business Communication
- #3 in Presentation Software Books

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165 ratings

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Jonathan Schwabish

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Jonathan Schwabish is an economist, writer, teacher, and creator of policy-relevant data visualizations. He is a senior research associate and data visualization specialist at the Urban Institute and publishes a blog and podcast at his site PolicyViz.com, where he helps people improve the way they process, visualize, analyze, and present their data and research. His tutorials, remakes, and interviews with data visualization and presentation experts speak to scholars, policy wonks, and anyone with a data story to tell. He is on Twitter @jschwabish.

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4 star		12%
3 star		7%
2 star		1%
1 star		4%

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The m

That rarest thing: a good dataviz book

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2022

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I cut my teeth on Tufte, and still love his book series. However, they are very high-concept and not so excellent at getting into the weeds.

I've bought quite a few other dataviz books to try to teach myself how to take the philosophical Tufte information and turn it into specific actionable methods to improve my work. Sadly, those books all tend to be not good.

Then I found this one. My gosh! This book is exactly what I wanted. First, it's software agnostic and doesn't try to show you how, but rather shows what and why. The author lays out many good guidelines, both those derived from Tufte ("integrate the graphics and text") and others I've figured out on my own ("start with gray"), but also goes much deeper and provides many other good guidelines and suggestions.

I read this book cover to cover, I'm going to keep it on my desk, and I'm already recommending it to others.

2 people found this helpful

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Peter V.

Packed with informative content and engaging to read!

Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2021

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This is a highly informative and easy to read book on data and data visualization. Having spent a career using and communicating with data across several sectors for very technical policy and program issues, I found myself continually saying "I wish I had this book years ago!"

It is very easy to read, even for those who aren't familiar with technical concepts or have an extensive background in this area. What's great is that Jon also shows you how to integrate creative and informative data visualizations into your overall project or presentation, related to and helping your written content as well. Because Jon practices what he preaches, the pages literally pop and instantly communicate facts and figures; and more importantly, it inspired me to create the same way, and apply these tools in my own work.

5 people found this helpful

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Vegas Mama

Easy to Read!

Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2021

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Love the book! I'm a researcher and presenting data clearly is always a challenge. I read it like a novel and bookmarked the portions that will help me make better charts. There are lots of practical tips and different types of sample graphs. The "before" format is nice to see what the image looks like originally, and the "after" is when the author jazzes it a bit (the "after" always looks better). I recommend this book.

2 people found this helpful

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B.M.JUTTE

Extensive overview of chart types

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2021

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The main part of this book provides an overview of the different chart types that are available. There is a lot to choose from and each reader, including the more experienced data visualizers, will find a couple of charts that they have never encountered before or learn about a different angle to a familiar chart.

The categorisation of the chart types is pretty arbitrary from time to time and doesn't feel right sometimes. Including counts in the section Qualitative is an example. The readability of certain charts is also a bit problematic as charts are squeezed into a single page.

Nice bonus chapters to me are the notes on developing a style guide for data visualization and 10 guidelines for better tables. Overall worth the read and handy if you look for inspiration for making your next viz

2 people found this helpful

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Cecelia

Fantastic resource

Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2021

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This book is wonderful. It has so many examples and provides an incredible amount of information on how to present effective visuals. I often create figures for work, and I foresee myself flipping through this book often to get ideas on how to present my data better.

3 people found this helpful

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ilexopaca7473

Doesn't Tell You Much

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2022

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I'm a scholar and hoped this book could help me create compelling graphs, charts, and other data visualizations. I even pre-ordered it. I was expecting an instruction manual, but this book only tells you how to present data, not how to create those visualizations using Tableau, etc. Ultimately, I regret spending the money on this heavy book that taught me very little. That said, if you really struggle with graphical representation of data, this book does offer some insights into how to improve the spatialization of your data points, so I'm giving it 2 stars. Mediocre at best.

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Vincent Indelicato III

Great Foundation Builder

Reviewed in the United States on June 21, 2021

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Excellent foundation builder for the discipline! It is very useful as a reference guide. I will say that it is fraught with typos and errors in both the text and the graphs (and the text referencing the graphs) so just be aware of that. Other than that, it's great!

2 people found this helpful

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JPCV

Excellent book

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2021

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this is a fresh new book on data visualization.
the examples are detailed and very relevant, it complements greatly other titles on the matter and the author has included excellent examples of visualization that are usually not explored.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

T Gee

Informative Book.....but

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2021

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I like this book but as with the past few books I've bought from Amazon they come damaged. This book was a bit bashed at top left of front cover and top right (slightly) on back cover. If I pay for a brand new book I want it in pristine condition, I can go into a book shop and choose the book that's in brand spanking new condition. The book itself is very informative and has some really nice examples but some examples are far too small and you can't (well I can't) view the image/read is accompanying text. I'm not sure there is any point in adding information that's hard to read, especially in a book named 'Better Data Visualisations'.

3 people found this helpful

Tackleberry

Not compatible with Kindle device

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 29, 2021

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When I purchase a book for Kindle, I expect it to be readable on a Kindle. The kindle edition of this book is not in fact compatible with my kindle device (new paperwhite).

Scott Henry

Book Falling Apart

Reviewed in Canada on January 10, 2022

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This book is a beautiful - the visual design is amazing and I was really enjoying going through it. However, the physical design is a mess. After about 2 hours of reading it, the first ~20 pages have fallen out of the book because the glue on the binding is so poor. When I received the book I was really excited to have it as a beautiful reference I can turn to throughout my own work but, given that the book is falling apart almost immediately, it is now effectively useless (unless I transfer it to a ringed binder or something....but who wants to do that with a brand new book?). The pages are falling out so easily that I don't even know if it will hold together long enough for me to finish the book on the first pass. I really wish this weren't the case as my review would probably be 5 stars if it weren't.

Imran Forbes

Comprehensive coverage of visualization ideas

Reviewed in Canada on November 11, 2021

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I like that the author provided explanations on design art and colouring concepts. By providing this context the visualization tips and applications were more meaningful. The writing style is easy going. Great reference book for the home or office.

rodrigo

Telling a story.

Reviewed in Germany on June 18, 2021

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This book is quite extraordinary in regards to give the presentational theory of graphed information. Truly a must to anyone who wants to tell stories through data.

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Better Data Visualizations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks

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