Visual Analytics – Visualizing Data from exploration to Inference & Insights ... foundation for data-driven decision making/actions

Visual analytics provides the last 12 inches between the masses of information and the human mind to make decisions

It is the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces

It’s an era of ‘Digital Strategy’ where element of abstract intuition on business strategy needs digital validation for apparent decision making, execution of action & to generate valuable outcome.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" - often more - but only when the story is best told graphically rather than verbally and the picture is well designed. Visualization is the graphical display of abstract information for two purposes: sense-making (also called data analysis) and communication. It substantially helps in optically identifying hidden patterns, filter-out ‘Signal & Information’ & identify hypothesis that needs statistical modeling & testing before a business decisions are made for execution.

Statistical information has abstraction. Whether it concerns customer/sales, operations, energy, incidences of disease, athletic performance, or anything else, even though it doesn't pertain to the physical world, we can still display it visually, but to do this we must find a way to give form to that which has none. This translation of the abstract into physical attributes of vision (length, position, size, shape, and color, to name a few) can only succeed if we understand a bit about visual perception and cognition. In other words, to visualize data effectively, we must follow design principles that are derived from an understanding of human perception.

Data visualization has effective outcome because it shifts the balance between perception and cognition to take fuller advantage of the brain's abilities. Seeing (i.e visual perception) which is handled by the visual cortex located in the rear of the brain, is extremely fast and efficient. We see immediately, with little effort. Thinking (i.e. cognition), which is handled primarily by the cerebral cortex in the front of the brain, is much slower and less efficient. Traditional data sense-making and presentation methods require conscious thinking for almost all of the work. Data visualization shifts the balance toward greater use of visual perception, taking advantage of our powerful eyes whenever possible.

Visual Analytics has ingrained data exploration that is iterative in nature to gather knowledge/insight before it’s leveraged for amicable decision making & execution of actions.