In the world of Big Data, data visualization tools and techniques are essential to analyze large amounts of information and make data-driven decisions as data is increasingly used for important management decisions. So there is a trend away from gut feeling and emotional decisions towards rational choices that are made based on numbers. Therefore, reports and visualizations have to be easily understood and meaningful.

Impact of Big Data

It is increasingly beneficial for professionals to be able to use data to make decisions and visuals to tell stories that communicate how data informs the question of person, subject, time, place, and method [1]. In the area of Big Data visualization comes with new ways and challenges due to the huge amounts of data. Therefore, new visualization techniques had to be created in order to make the data amounts more tangible for the user.

Toolset to get Started

In the examples that follow immediately below of new visualization possibilities in the area of Big Data, I have used Google’s BigQuery and Data Studio. For the free tier of BigQuery, you can simply register and use public data sets here [2], which definitely fall under the Big Data label. Data Studio is free anyway and a great alternative to MS Power BI, Qlik and other BI Tools. Since you get a whole scalable Data Warehouse technology and the BI layer for free, I find Google as a sandbox for your first steps in the field of Big Data visualization perfectly suited.

Visualization Examples

Here a few examples of visualizations that I used and have seen the most in the field of representing Big Data.

TreeMaps

A tree map or a tile chart is used to visualize hierarchical structures, which are represented by nested rectangles. In this way, size ratios can be vividly displayed by selecting the area of the rectangles proportionally to the size of the data unit to be displayed.

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