WHAT STORIES DO OUR DATA HAVE TO TELL? VISUALIZATION AS A KEY INSTANCE IN DATA ANALYSIS

LABADIE, N.; FERREYRA, J.

Rosario

Encuentro; VI Meeting of Young Biophysicists; 2022

Data visualization is the graphical or visual representation of data (or moregenerally, any kind of information) in a clear and effective way. In other words,visualization?s purpose is to assist the viewer in the qualitative understanding of data.It is vital for scientific research, since effective visualizations will allow a scientist bothto gather information from their own data and to successfully communicate theirinsights to others. The right decisions in visual representation make it possible to spottrends, patterns, correlations between variables as well as detect outliers, while poorchoices in this step might generate confusion and misleading results and then lead toincorrect conclusions. When done well, data visualization tells a story. Raw data arejust that, raw data: a collection of numbers and words which can?t provide any clearinformation at first glance. However, with a smart implementation of visualization tools(charts, graphs and diagrams) we can tell a story with them which highlights the mostimportant insights and help us to turn them into action. Even though the importanceof data visualization for scientific research is unquestionable, scientific literatureoverflows with deficient data visuals and few scientists focus their attention on themin the same way they do with generating data or writing about it. There is a lack oftraining in data visualization among the scientific community, which is why, in thispresentation, we aim to contribute to bridging the gap between Biophysics researchand analysis and graphical representation of data. In this short talk we intend torevise important aspects of data visualization, discussing the choice of an adequateplot for different types of data as well as showcasing common mistakes in theconstruction of graphics and their interpretation. We will provide tools for theimplementation of data visualization during exploratory data analysis, the first step inthe data analysis pipeline. The talk will go over concepts of statistical analysis as wellas graphic design, showing meaningful examples related to biological problems.