September 22nd, 2020 by Wayde Herman
Data visualization is an important and sometimes undervalued tool in a data scientist’s toolkit. It allows us to gain an understanding and intuition about the data, through exploratory data analysis, which influences preprocessing, feature engineering, and the correct machine learning algorithm choice. It also helps to better evaluate models and even allows you to spot areas in the data where models could have poor performance.
Taking data visualization one step further by adding interactivity is even more advantageous. By adding interactive elements to your visualizations you create a more engaging experience. This in turn makes a user ‘explore’ visualizations instead of just reading them!
In this tutorial, I will be covering how to build an interactive data visualization, specifically a box plot as an example, using JavaScript and a charting library. I will begin by first briefly covering the basics of box plots before going through the steps of building one and then finally using the technique in a fun example to investigate the distribution of happiness between the different regions of the planet in an attempt to answer the question: ‘Where should you live to be happier?’.
Read the JS charting tutorial »
September 18th, 2020 by AnyChart Team
Lately, we’ve seen a bunch of cool geovisualizations on the topics of climate, pollution, and human impact. Here are some of the most interesting fresh ones. Check out the new DataViz Weekly post which is entirely dedicated to great examples of environmental maps:
- American climate shifts — ProPublica
- Earth’s most biologically important lands — RESOLVE
- Rainforest loss — Bloomberg Green
- Toxicity in North Brooklyn — North Brooklyn Neighbors
Read more »
September 16th, 2020 by AnyChart Team
We’ve just updated the AnyChart and AnyGantt extensions for Qlik Sense to further facilitate the path to enhanced data-driven insights for you! Keep reading to learn about the new amazing Waterfall Chart and Gantt Chart features delivered in the 4.3.249 releases. Then check out the latest versions to see them all in action!
Read more at qlik.anychart.com »
September 11th, 2020 by AnyChart Team
The long wait is over! DataViz Weekly is here bringing some of the best new maps and charts from all over the web to the spotlight! Look at these amazing examples that show the power of smart data visualization:
- College football fan movement and COVID-19 risk — ESPN
- California wildfires over the past 17 years — FlowingData
- London solar opportunities — UCL Energy
- Voter scenarios for the U.S. presidential election — The Washington Post
Read more »
September 4th, 2020 by AnyChart Team
Celebrating the first Friday of September, don’t miss these awesome fresh data visualization projects for inspiration! We have recently met them around the web and are glad to introduce you to them in a quick overview. So our new picks for DataViz Weekly include:
- COVID-19 situation in Europe, a subnational view — WHO/Europe
- Potential outcomes of the U.S. presidential election — The New York Times
- State of democracy worldwide since 2006 — Preity Lodha
- Colors of the American landscape vs electoral map colors — The Upshot
Read more »
August 28th, 2020 by AnyChart Team
We’ve curated another four great examples of data visualization in action. Would you like to learn about them and check them out right now? Wait no longer! Below is a list of the projects highlighted in the new DataViz Weekly — just give it a glance and go ahead!
- Exploring a link between racism in the housing policy and hotter neighborhoods — The New York Times
- Analyzing the content of cable TV news — Stanford University
- Tracking gender inequality in American politics — The Washington Post
- Summarizing voting rules for the 2020 U.S. election by state — NBC News
Read more »
August 21st, 2020 by AnyChart Team
DataViz Weekly is here with a new dose of awesome charts and maps for all data visualization addicts! Today, we are putting a spotlight on the following projects where data is allowed to speak with the help of graphics:
- Stop and search incidents in London — Esri UK Education
- California wildfires — Los Angeles Times
- Scale of the Beirut explosion — Reuters
- Mortality rates for Black and White Americans — New York Times Opinion
Read more »
August 14th, 2020 by AnyChart Team
Look at these new cool information visualization projects and notice how different techniques help explore and communicate data, in practice.
Today in DataViz Weekly:
- FiveThirtyEight’s 2020 U.S. presidential election model — FiveThirtyEight
- Herd immunity simulations — The Washington Post
- Unemployment in the United States at the census tract level — The Upshot
- Home prices in America — Realbloc
Read more »
August 7th, 2020 by AnyChart Team
Lately, we’ve come across a lot of new impressive charts all over the internet. Here are some of the most interesting ones — check them out and you’ll see the real power of data visualization in action! Today in DataViz Weekly:
- New age for your age — FlowingData
- Electricity generation in the U.S. states by fuel source — The Washington Post
- Mortality consequences of climate change and income inequality — Bloomberg Green
- 1990s music recognition across generations — The Pudding
Read more »
August 4th, 2020 by Wayde Herman
When using a charting library like AnyChart, which makes visualizing data so quick and easy, often the most challenging step for beginners is loading data. I think this is largely a result of the fact that while the ways we output the data are quite similar, the input data is commonly very different. The data may differ in many ways including the number of features in the dataset, what type these features may be, the format of the data, and how the data is stored. It is this final issue which we will be addressing today.
There is a lot of coverage in the documentation of using a data object declared within the code as well as importing your data from a file using AnyChart’s data loader. But what about importing the data from an SQL database? This is an easily done but often misunderstood approach to handling and loading data for data visualizations.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to use JavaScript to query a database because JavaScript is a client side solution and querying a database requires a server side approach due to security concerns — you just can’t store database login and password in your JavaScript code. There are many workarounds for this problem including approaches involving PHP, Ajax, Node.js, and many more. Today we will focus on using PHP to handle this task for us when our data is stored in MySQL.
In this tutorial, we will be covering how to query a MySQL database using PHP. We will describe the steps involved and reveal that it is in fact not challenging at all, just different!
Read the tutorial »