Any situation where you need to quickly summarize and compare large datasets across multiple variables, making it easy to identify trends and patterns, can benefit from the use of a pivot table. Examples of these scenarios include analyzing sales data by product and region, tracking website traffic by source and time of day, examining customer demographics by purchase history, evaluating employee performance metrics across departments, or summarizing project progress based on team members and deadlines.

You can use pivot tables to:

1. Run automatic calculations on summed or counted values
2. Create percentages of totals
3. Segment data by date, the user, or other variables and calculate totals

Here are some examples of how to use pivot tables in Excel:

• Summarizing Data: Pivot tables can automatically summarize data, such as combining view totals for duplicate blog posts.
• Counting Rows: Pivot tables can count rows that have something in common, such as the number of employees in each department.
• Analyzing Sales Data: Pivot tables can be used to analyze sales data, such as total revenue by month and region.
• Calculating percentages:

Here is an example from ExcelJet.

• Excel builds a two-way pivot table that breaks down sales by color and region:

• Swap Region and Color:

One visual aid for showing a flow from one set of data to another is a Sankey diagram. The connections are known as links, and the objects that are linked are known as nodes. Comparing quantities at various levels is done via Sankey diagrams. Among other things, they are able to display budgets, financial outcomes, the narrative of an application process, multi-round elections, and more. On the website Our Energy System, it shows you the flow of energy in the United States. The sankey visualization is very pleasing to the eye and I like how each different type of energy has more information and each word you can click on it and it will give you brief facts about the use of energy in the United States.

Here is the sankey visualization:

As you can see they have a different color for each electricity we use in America. Then they go into another section where they give you more information. Ans then they give you the whole scale on how much energy we actually use. I also like the visualizations like the icons they used. There are also other in-depth energy systems one this website that you can use. Every single word on this sankey visualization you can click and give you more information. This is really cool and I don’t think I ever seen this type of visualization, but it is very useful and probably be using this in the future.

When your data is in percentages, think about pie charts. Pie charts make more sense when your raw data is in percentages, unless you have too many observations that clog the pie, in which case you’ll go back to a bar or column chart. Pie charts that display the proportion of the pie consumed as opposed to the quantity left are the most useful. Pie charts are vibrant and appear to display a lot of information, but they are typically employed in a way that does not improve understanding over a stacked bar chart, for example. It is only useful for displaying the relative contributions to a sum of several components when there aren’t many components and the relative amounts aren’t particularly high.

Pie charts have a somewhat limited range of applications, which is best summarized by its definition. You need some sort of full quantity that is separated into several different portions in order to utilize a pie chart. Instead of comparing groups to one another, the main goal of a pie chart should be to compare each group’s contribution to the total. A different plot type should be used in place of the pie chart if the aforementioned requirements are not met. Here is a pie chart I made for the most popular sodas in the US. And here is where you can get that data.

Rather than using a bar graph, a lollipop chart uses a line and dot instead. Lollipop charts are used for comparing categories, showing trends over time, or ranking data. The dot represents the value, while the line anchors to the x-axis. In lollipop charts, more bars are displayed than in bar or column charts. It is possible to make the chart less overwhelming by using lollipops with thinner sticks and pointier heads. It is possible to use lollipop charts when the values are all high, such as over 75%. In contrast to wide bars or tall columns, a lollipop style can tone things down. In a bar chart, lollipop charts are useful when the bars have similar heights, resulting in a too colorful graph. A Lollipop chart can be a more appealing alternative. For more information on lollipop charts you can go to the cite here. Here is my example of a Lollipop chart that I made:

Some tools that will help us compare numbers are graphs. Like pie graphs, bar graphs, scatter plots, line charts, histograms, etc. Many other types of structures will help us to compare numbers or data. However, I am mainly focusing on bar graphs and pie graphs. Bar charts or bar graphs represent categorical data using rectangular bars whose lengths or heights correspond to the values they represent. Vertical or horizontal bars can be plotted. Vertical bar charts are also known as column charts. A pie chart illustrates numerical proportions by dividing a circle into slices. Pie charts represent quantities by arcs whose lengths are proportional to their width. Also, another tool you can use is called Tableau. This service offers several options, including a desktop application, a server version, and a hosted version, as well as a free public version. CSV files, Google Adwords and Analytics data, Salesforce data, and many other data import options are available. A variety of chart formats and mapping capabilities are available as output options. As a result, designers can create color-coded maps that showcase geographically relevant data in a format that’s much easier to understand than a table or chart. Anyone looking for a powerful tool to create data visualizations that can be used in a variety of settings can use Tableau’s free public version. Whether you are a journalist or a political junkie or just want to quantify your data, Tableau Public can be used by anyone. They have a large gallery of infographics and visualizations created with the public version that can be used as inspiration for your own. In addition to creating charts and graphs, Tableau lets you create maps. If you want to create visualizations that are accessible to the public, Tableau Public is a great tool to use.

An Example from Tableau

TV’s Sci-Fi DataVerse by Heather Cox

Using the VizHealth website helped me understand how to visualize graphics better and with this experience, got me a new tool to help in providing information or data the correct way. Above in the figure, is my take on an icon array. I did not know they called them this and didn’t even know what it was until I saw it. This figure above is only an example and does not with real information. It is just an example of an icon array and if you go to the website, you can also see how to do this type of graphic. With this, you can change however you want and use any information you want. I think this site is very valuable for learning about data visualizations because of how you can learn through doing it. It is not just a website that has you reading, it gives you tools to help you understand and you can do it yourself and learn how to create a data visulization.