21 Ways to Visualize a Timeseries

Course Objective

This course is a deep-dive into the structure of visualizations, in particular visualizations of timeseries data. The course is now live at the Academy.

Pre-requisites

Knowledge of basic visualization techniques and mathematical notation of functions and maps. Familiarity with data series and their usage in data science.

Summary of the Course

What we aim to achieve in this course is to “deconstruct” how typical and less common visualization of timeseries work. In the first instance we decompose the visualization process into:

• A mathematical transformation which (optionally) may operate on the raw data
• A visual transformation which converts quantitative data into a visual space

We apply this “recipe” to a large number of visualizations (21 in total), using always the same simple data series.

21 ways to visualize a simple timeseries

1. A Numerical Table is also a Visualization
2. Visualizing Observation Times
3. Visualizing Observation Values
4. Color Plots of Measurement Values
5. Bubble Plots of Measurement Values
6. Scatter Plots and their Limitations
7. Linear Line Plot and Continuity
8. The Step Plot and Discreteness
9. The Smooth Plot: Pleasant but with a stinging tail
10. The Area Chart: Filling up space to our advantage
11. New Visualization Horizons with the Horizon Chart
12. Abusing the Bar Chart Concept
13. A Sorted Bar Chart and the power of mathematical transformations
14. The Histogram Transformation
15. The (Probability) Density Plot and Mathematical Models
16. The Lag Plot and Persistence
17. Autocorrelation and further Arcana
18. The Phase Diagram and Dynamical Systems
19. Displaying data in the Frequency domain
20. A Calendar is also a Visualization
21. The Plot Thickens: The Weekly Calendar Version

Get Started with the Course

The course is available at the Academy.