Sometimes you may encounter a visualization that you do not understand. You might just not be familiar with that type of visualization, often because different disciplines have their "go-to" types of visualizations that work well with their data.
Or perhaps you haven't dealt with charts and graphs a lot before. You may need to work on developing your data visualization literacy through websites such as Seeing Data's Developing Visual Literacy or UTSC's Data Visualization Literacy modules.
Check out these links to help you make sense of what you find:
- Understanding Visualizations by IBM
- Quick general overview of common visualizations
- The Data Visualization Catalogue
- Explains many visualizations with breakdowns that clearly show you how to read them
- 7 Data Visualization Types You Should be Using More (and How to Start) by Evan Sinar
- Explains how to understand and use some less familiar visualization types
- Top 5 things to look for (or visualisation in a hurry) by SeeingData
- Tips for finding the key information to look for in a visualization. Check out this whole section on data visualization literacy for more tips on understanding visualizations
- How to read and interpret network graphs by Nodus Labs
- Explains how to understand network graphs
- Dot Plots: A Useful Alternative to Bar Charts by Naomi Robbins
- Bar charts/graphs come up often, learning about some alternative formats, not as commonly mentioned, might be a useful addition to your data visualization toolkit
- Why not to use two axes, and what to use instead by Lisa Charlotte Rost
- Dual axes graphs can be problematic. Read this article to make sense of the problems and alternatives to a dual axes graph
- Seeing Theory by Daniel Kunin
- A visual introduction to probability and statistics
- One Chart at a Time video series hosted by Jon Schwabish
- Guests discuss one chart type per video including what it is, when to use it, what to watch out for, and tips for effective use