Dataviz Universe

👋 Hi! Last week, I gave you the shortest explanation of how a graph on a website works. So now you know what HTML, CSS, SVG, and JavaScript are. 95% of you said you're interested in how the web works, so today I want to take it one step further and answer this question: ➡️ Can I make interactive graphs with R or Python, and how does it work? Short answer: yes. Both R and Python offer powerful libraries that let you build stunning interactive charts with just a few lines of code. In R, this...

👋 Hi! Today, I suggest we go through the quickest introduction on how a website works. And more importantly, how a graph on a website is built.If you're interested, you can read a long-form version of this on the d3 graph gallery! If you enjoy charts (I guess you do 😀), chances are you’ve seen a ton of them on the web. So, it’s worth knowing just a tiny bit about how this magic happens! Let’s break it down: 1️⃣ HTML – The Foundation Try this: Create a file on your laptop and name it...

👋 Hi! This week, one of my LinkedIn posts gained some traction. It turns out that most people still default to simple line charts when visualizing temporal data. Line charts are great. But, there are many other alternatives that can bring out more insights depending on your data! So, let’s go through a few alternatives you can consider the next time you’re working with temporal data: 1️⃣ Streamgraph Less accurate, but it creates organic, beautiful shapes that are truly eye-catching.✨ Use it...

👋 Hi! Have you heard of the Information Is Beautiful (IIB) awards? It’s one of the most prestigious data visualization competitions, held annually. This week, the longlist (first round of selections) was announced, and 3 out of my 3 projects made it! 🎉 One of them is called: Getting Older Yes, it’s my birthday today (and I'm getting way too old), but that’s not what this project is about. 🙃 It’s a visual essay exploring how populations age across different countries. Some nations are...

👋 Hallo! It’s been a tough week for me! Between the incredible launch (🙏) of Matplotlib Journey and a trip to Berlin to meet my new collaborator (exciting news coming soon!), things have been busy. So today I suggest we just highlight a simple but fundamental concept in data visualization. My 13-hour train ride is almost over, let’s be quick! All map projections are flawed. Yes, all of them. A map projection is a mathematical transformation that flattens our planet. It turns a...

👋 Hi! Today, let's talk about Venn diagrams and more importantly, what to use instead! But before we dive in, a quick heads-up. Less than 48 hours remain to join my Matplotlib Journey project! 🚀 Take a look If you want to get better at data visualization, there’s only one way: practice. And that’s exactly what this course is about. You'll tackle dozens of exercises and work with real-life datasets at the end of each module to apply what you’ve learned. Here’s just a glimpse of the plots...

👋 Hi!I'm really excited this week. 🤗After more than 5 months of hard work, my Matplotlib Journey project is finally complete! 🎉 🍾 If you want to learn how to make great chart with python, take a look! I'm very proud of what we've created and feedback are awesome. The last module focuses on making maps in Python. As always, we combined Python techniques with dataviz theory. It was the perfect opportunity to dive into a dataviz story that I believe is foundational. Let me share it with you and...

👋 Hi! About 10 years ago, I was a bioinformatician working on the wheat genome, feeling pretty lost about my career path. I had already started the R Graph Gallery and knew I loved data visualization, but I wasn’t sure where to take it. Curious about data science, I attended a conference and spoke with a hiring manager. When I mentioned my little side project in R, he laughed and said something I’ll never forget: "If you’re serious about dataviz, you need to learn D3.js." At the time, I had...

All my newsletter issues are now available online. Share them with a friend! 👋 Hi!Last week I shipped a whole new module about annotation in my matplotlib journey online course 🎉. I also shared with you a few thoughts about how legends should often be replaced by annotation.I shared this graph to illustrate my idea: Graph by Joseph Barbier for the Python Graph Gallery and Matplotlib Journey. Some people replied to me asking some legit questions about this stacked area graph (thanks! 🙏)Soooo,...

👋 Hi! You're now more than 9000 people reading this newsletter 😱. Thank you so much! 🙏🙏🙏If you want to share it with a friend, I just put together a (for now, ugly) homepage with all past issues. As always, today’s tip is short but powerful. Let’s talk about… The problem with legends Most dataviz libraries make it easy to add legends. That's great! Sometimes, they’re essential for understanding a chart. But most of the time? Legends are a hassle. Take this stacked area chart, for example:...