Data may seem dry and boring on its own but when visualized its appeal not only draws attention but makes it look interesting and easier to understand. Data visualization is the latest trend in the market and many are using it to make their data stand out in the crowd.
Words haven’t gone out of style, data visualization is just a technique of representing those words in a visual format to make it easier to understand by the general audience.
For example, take the chart given below. One ought to be living under a rock if they haven’t heard of Harry Potter. Here are the spells that were used and how many times used in all the 7 books represented in a chart form.
Now, I won’t be surprised if you haven’t read the above paragraph and this is the first line you’re reading. That’s the power of data visualization. When you add a picture or a chart or any visual in an article, we are automatically drawn towards it.
A picture indeed speaks a thousand words. Today we need these pictures aka charts and graphs more than ever, with the world advancing and more complex technology arising. Data visualization is the best way to feed all complex data in a simple form to any audience. To do this there are many data visualization tools available out there.
Google Charts
Google is an essential part of the functioning of the world today and this tool by Google is no less the same for your data. Google Charts is user-friendly, compatible with all browsers, simple to use tool that is available for free.
This platform has a wide gallery that can be customized as per the user’s needs. It also offers multiple controls and cross-browser portability with additional plugins.
This highly interactive charting library supports Android, iPhone, and iPad. It can read from multiple data sources like Google Spreadsheets, SQL, Excel, etc.
The only cons of this tool will be that network connection is required for its usage, it lacks demo and is less sophisticated when it comes to statistical processing.
Chartist.js
One can say Chartist is the new transformed version of Excel. It contains a huge array of charts that are rendered beautifully. They are responsive and animated. This JS library is free to use and fast-paced.
This popular open-source library is highly customizable and helps plot data in web applications. This simple yet flexible tool makes it easier for designers and developers
D3.js
D3.js also known as D3 is the abbreviation of Data-Driven Documents. It is a Javascript library, that helps you create beautiful images with data. It helps you connect the Document Object Model with your data and present it in your document.
Highcharts
As claimed on its website, it is used by 72 out of 100 world’s largest companies. It is considered the fastest and flexible, that would provide an instant output with minimum need for any further clarification.
Anyone can view its interactive visualizations, it’s cross-browser support only make it more reliable and easy to use.
Tableau Public
If data visualization is a wand, Tableau is its true master. Its ability to provide interactive visualizations is much better and more precise than any other tool, that has indeed acquired it a huge customer base.
It is designed and rather well suited to deal with big data operations like artificial intelligence and machine learning, which have humongous and rapidly changing datasets.
Tableau Public creates graphics in an aesthetic and precise manner and has outstanding visualization capabilities. It provides quick insights and to add as a bonus is even mobile-friendly.
Sisense
Sisense is a user-friendly and flexible interface, that is well suited for huge databases. It provides instant insights and integrates well with different types of data. This tool is easy to customize and is used to visual dashboards that show trends and patterns and help make data-driven decisions easily.
However, there are drawbacks like the visualization types are limited, it is difficult to maintain analytic cubes and it does not have any inbuilt data type to support time format.
These were some of the best data visualization tools available out there. Hope this helped you with choosing the best one for your data.
Plotly
This data visualization tool helps you to compose, edit and share interactive data visualizations. This tool is an open-source one and can be connected to D3.js to create creative charts by connecting to MySQL.
Information is Beautiful
This tool named information is beautiful, consists of beautiful pre-visualized visualizations. The visualizations are constantly updated and are built on facts, all of which are downloadable. They are subjected to make the viewers more informed and form apt add-ons for presentations.
GanttPro
Data visualization is a necessity in the business world now and is increasing the need for project management tools like GanttPro. It is suitable for creating charts and graphs for projects and even provides you with a free trial period.
ColorBrewer
This data visualization tool helps with color customizing your chart. There are numerous of colors available here to make your chart colorful and aesthetically pleasant to view. This tool also helps in distinguishing between the colors present in a chart.
Canva
Canva not only makes your presentations and websites look beautiful with the various amount of pre-visualised designs available there. It understands your data and lets you customize and form your own visuals. This tool is mostly preferred by designers but might come in handy when in search of a free data visualization tool.
Pluscharts
This is a javascript charting library that is easy to set up and easy to use. This tool helps you to build charts and graphs, that are supportive of websites, internal and web applications. It has various customization options that will help you build charts according to the data you hold. This tool helps to enhance your websites and application with its interactive charting.
