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Data Visualization for Business

Additional recommended websites

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Google

Pew Research Center

  • Pew Research Center Datasets - Pew Research Center makes its data available to the public for secondary analysis after a period of time. Full list of topics is available here. Once a topic is selected, you will get access to both the dataset itself and publications from that dataset so you can see how the data were used by other researchers. How to access Pew research Center survey data blog post.  

UN Data

  • Datamarts - The numerous databases or tables collectively known as "datamarts" contain over 60 million data points and cover a wide range of statistical themes including agriculture, crime, communication, development assistance, education, energy, environment, finance, gender, health, labour market, manufacturing, national accounts, population and migration, science and technology, tourism, transport and trade.

University of Michigan – ICPSR

  • ResearchDataGov.org is a product of the federal statistical agencies and units, the single portal for discovery of restricted data in the federal statistical system. Users can search for data by topic, agency, and keywords. Questions related to the data should be directed to the owning agency, using the contact information on the page that describes the data.

US Government

  • Bureau of Economic Analysis – search data by topic, place or economic accounts.

  • Bureau of Labor Statistics - Data retrieval tools, charts and applications, customized tables.

  • Data.gov - Data.gov is the United States government's open data website. It provides access to datasets published by agencies across the federal government. Use it to find data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations, and more. There are over 260,000 datasets available.
  • US Census Bureau - Build customized maps from any variable in the data tables. Topics covered are: education, employment, health, and housing just to name a few.

The World Bank

  • DataBank - an analysis and visualisation tool that contains collections of time series data on a variety of topics. More than 80 databases to choose from.
  • Microdata Library - collection of datasets from the World Bank and other international, regional and national organizations.

Tools

There are many visualization tools, some established ones and highly popular like Microsoft Excel, some more recent, but equally powerful. All these tools have capabilities that allow users to create various charts, tables and dashboards.  Popular tools include Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Tableau – please check out the software section on the left for useful resources on these widely used tools. 

The Chartmaker Directory

  • Catalogue of references that will offer an answer to one of the most common questions in data visualisation: 'which tool do you need to make that chart?’

The Data Visualization Catalogue

  • Library of different information visualization types, learn when to use them and what tools to use as well as a few examples of these tools in action.

 Datawrapper

  • Datawrapper - Free version available that will allow you to create beautiful charts, maps, and tables.

Ferdio

From Data to Viz

  • Classification of chart types based on input data format. Use it to get suggestions for the most appropriate graph for your data. It links to the code to build it and lists common caveats you should avoid.

Learn UI Design

OpenRefine

  • OpenRefine - free, open source tool for working with messy data: cleaning it; transforming it from one format into another; and extending it with web services and external data.

  • OpenRefine user manual

 

Books

University of Michigan – School of Information

Trina Chiasson