Week 10 & 11 of my Merit America have gone by and have been all about the art of data visualization. This is honestly the part I was looking forward to the most. I’m a creative person by nature, so when I first considered data analysis, this is what I was drawn to. I am so impressed by the beautiful visualizations I’ve seen around and hope to get to that level with a lot more practice. Numbers aren’t traditionally viewed as creative, but instead cold, exacting and unnuanced. That may be true for the science of data analysis, but that science leads to art. The ability to interpret and extract meaning from data and use it to build insights is the heart of it all. In fact, the way an analyst combines all those different pieces of information is the art. When an analyst can see a relationship between what seems to be two radically different fields and make a prediction or offer some insight, that’s creativity. Then when they can present that information in a beautifully simple and impactful form - it’s art. That's exactly what I want to be able to do and a large reason I consider this field a good fit for me. I know I’m only at the beginning stages now, but I have my sights set! Here's a great example of what I'm inspired by. It's a fantastic intersection of data and creativity by David McCandless. He created a simple bar chart, but by adding the city skylines to the tops he's elevated the beauty and information at the same time. Click on the image to see the full viz. So cool!
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