We have all seen rows upon rows of numbers at one time and realized how difficult it could be to make sense of large amounts of data and make decisions from them. Presenting data in large tables creates some organization but can still be overwhelming to examine and process. An effective, easy and impactful way to present large amounts of data is by creating pictures or visualizations of your data to help organize and summarize it, especially if it is complex and contains large amounts of information. Why visualize our data? Our sense of sight is a very powerful tool and since we were babies and our eyesight developed, we used our visual sense to help us understand the world around us (hint: data). This coupling of visual cues and our cognitive ability to reason is an amazing tool we can leverage to help consumers of data understand it better. After all, getting information from a visual representation is much more effective than looking at rows and rows of numbers.

For a more detailed explanation of the evidence behind why visualizations are effective, watch this  video