Overview

The tools you need to make professional-quality infographics have never been cheaper and easier to use. These days, there are many open-source and free-to-use applications that will help you turn large bodies of numerical data into chart, graphs, and other types of data visualization (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..

Data visualizations bring a number of benefits to any professional document, even short ones:

• Though they have become extremely easy to make, people in the workplace still tend to be impressed by the extra effort and thoughtful presentation implicit in making a visualization.
• Data visualizations also help to make the work of digesting and interpreting data more efficient by displaying trends or illustrating the significance of specific information without poring over page after page of numbers.
• Because of this efficiency, visual elements are also better at communicating certain ideas more quickly than words or tabular data. Something that may take many sentences to communicate, a sudden drop in the efficiency of a process, or a surge in sales among a certain demographic, are instantly recognizable as spikes or dips along the X axis of a line graph.

Assignment

Find a data set and create a data visualization that you feel best communicates that data in a form that maximizes the impact of the data to suit a specific audience and purpose.

For example:

Infographics take advantage of the immediacy and efficiency of data visualizations and can be used to emphasize the main points of a written document, or stand on their own to advocate and inform. For example, this infographic about diversity in STEM fields (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. uses a handful of colorful data visualizations and a small amount of text to draw attention to specific deficits and disparities in specific workplaces. It’s also careful to note the sources of its information in case the reader would like a greater level of detail or information about how the data was collected.

For example:

This short report from the Department of Education (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. provides an overview of literacy and numeracy for men and women. In this online short report, the authors created two bar charts that are designed to show relationships between data and then they briefly explain the importance of the data.

Similar to the examples above, select a specific concept, issue, or topic related to your major or something that you are interested in researching. Locate and collect numerical data about the subject (in the form of studies, reports, spreadsheets, or articles), and select which data you feel provide the best overall sense of the subject. Keep a list of links to these sources for later. If you can’t find numerical data on your topic, pick a topic that is easier to research.