Data Visualization: Issues, Impediments and Perspectives

Data visualization deals with visual representation of data. It is the practice of presenting collected data and result of analysis in terms graphical objects. It deals with the pictorial presentation of facts and figures. In the modern era computing, data visualization has become a popular option for both presenting and analyzing the data. Data visualization may represent the data in the form of an animation, a map, a chart or a simple picture. Graphical presentation of datarepresents the data in a better way than just presenting them in tables. The graphs present the information more elaborately and graphical displays always convey the information much easily and correctly. The main goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and effectively through graphical means. This study focuses on the important aspects of data visualization tools and their use in solving business problems. The availability of the graphical tools in various statistical software packages in the present market was analyzed. Some extension in the field of multidimensional visualization and dynamic and interactive graphs were also proposed and the proposed extensions were presented in form of software developed using Microsoft Visual Basic. Further a couple of graphical tool were also developed as Add-In for Microsoft Excel. The thesis is divided in five different chapters. The first chapter being the introductory one, introduces the topic, makes a brief discussion about the history of data visualization tools. This chapter also presents the motivation behind making the study and the detailed chapterization schemes. Chapter two deals with comparisons of statistical software packages present in the market in terms of the PREFACE Preface vii graphical tools available in the respective packages. The third chapter is dedicated to dynamic and interactive graphs. This chapter also presents some extensions in dynamic and interactive graphs and these are implemented using Microsoft Visual Basic 6. Chapter four deals development of graphical tools as add-in for Microsoft excel. A few graphical tools, those were not there in Microsoft Excel by default were developed were developed as add-in for Microsoft excel. The sixth chapter is dedicated to multidimensional visualization tools and presents an extension in the field. This chapter presents a multidimensional visualization tool; developed using Microsoft Visual Basic 6.