Data visualisation
No matter what tool you use, you’ll need a little bit of training to make good data visualisations.
The Library has produced an online introduction you might find useful.
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Data to Viz: Helps you to decide which type of graph is appropriate to your data.
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Tableau: academics and students have access to the full desktop version and entire eLearning suite (see the Tableau Gallery for some great inspiration)
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RAWGraphs: Free and open source, secure browser-based visualisation (you can also run it locally, i.e. outside of a browser). Intended to ‘bridge gap between spreadsheet applications and graphics editors’. Version 2.0 beta is available.
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PowerBI: PowerBI is now included with Microsoft365. Click the 9 dots in the top left of browser version of Outlook or Word, select “All Apps $\rightarrow$” and scroll to find PowerBI. Skills with Tableau and PowerBI are highly sought after in industry, as are R, SQL and Python (but Tableau and PowerBI don’t have as steep a learning curve).
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Chart.js: Simple yet flexible JavaScript charting for designers & developers.
Our recommendation: Tableau
Tableau can produce beautiful results quickly and is free to academic researchers. It’s not supported by the University — but neither are any of the others.
Activity: Want to try out some data visualisation? Of course you do!