Data visualization: a reading list

Here is a collection of books and peer-reviewed articles on data visualization. There is a lot of good material on the philosophy, principles and practices of data visualization.

I plan to update the list with additional material in the future (see the current version as a draft). Do reach out if you have any recommendations.

Introduction

- Graphs in Statistical Analysis (Anscombe 1973)

• An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data (Schwabish 2014)
• Data Visualization in Sociology (Healy and Moody 2014)
• Beyond Bar and Line Graphs: Time for a New Data Presentation Paradigm (Weissgerber et al. 2015)
• Graphical Perception: Theory, Experimentation, and Application to the Development of Graphical Methods (Cleveland and McGill 1984)
• Graphic Display of Data (Wilkinson 2012)
• Visualizing Data in Political Science (Traunmüller 2020)
• Better Data Visualizations: A Guide for Scholars, Researchers, and Wonks (Schwabish 2021)

History

- Historical Development of the Graphical Representation of Statistical Data (Funkhouser 1937)

• Quantitative Graphics in Statistics: A Brief History (Beniger and Robyn 1978)

Tips and recommendations

- Ten Simple Rules for Better Figures (Rougier et al. 2014)

• Designing Graphs for Decision-Makers (Zacks and Franconeri 2020)
• Designing Effective Graphs (Frees and Miller 1998)
• Fundamental Statistical Concepts in Presenting Data: Principles for Constructing Better Graphics (Donahue 2011)
• Designing Better Graphs by Including Distributional Information and Integrating Words, Numbers, and Images (Lane and Sándor 2009)

Analysis and decision making

- Statistical inference for exploratory data analysis and model diagnostics (Buja et al. 2009)

• Statistics and Decisions: The Importance of Communication and the Power of Graphical Presentation (Mahon 1977)
• The Eight Steps of Data Analysis: A Graphical Framework to Promote Sound Statistical Analysis (Fife 2020)

Uncertainty

- Researchers Misunderstand Confidence Intervals and Standard Error Bars (Belia et al. 2005)

• Error bars in experimental biology (Cumming et al. 2007)
• Confidence Intervals and the Within-the-Bar Bias (Pentoney and Berger 2016)
• Depicting Error (Wainer 1996)
• When (ish) is My Bus?: User-centered Visualizations of Uncertainty in Everyday, Mobile Predictive Systems (Kay et al. 2016)
• Decisions With Uncertainty: The Glass Half Full (Joslyn and LeClerc 2013)
• Uncertainty Visualization (Padilla et al. 2020)
• A Probabilistic Grammar of Graphics (Pu and Kay 2020)

Tables

- Let's Practice What We Preach: Turning Tables into Graphs (Gelman et al. 2002)

• Why Tables Are Really Much Better Than Graphs (Gelman 2011)
• Graphs or Tables (Ehrenberg 1978)
• Using Graphs Instead of Tables in Political Science (Kastellec and Leoni 2007)
• Ten Guidelines for Better Tables (Schwabish 2020)

Deciding on a chart

- Graph and chart aesthetics for experts and laymen in design: The role of familiarity and perceived ease of use (Quispel et al. 2016)

Chart types

Boxplots

- 40 years of boxplots (Wickham and Stryjewski 2011)

Pie charts

- No Humble Pie: The Origins and Usage of a Statistical Chart (Spence 2005)

Infographics

- Infovis and Statistical Graphics: Different Goals, Different Looks (Gelman and Unwin 2013)

• InfoVis Is So Much More: A Comment on Gelman and Unwin and an Invitation to Consider the Opportunities (Kosara 2013)
• InfoVis and Statistical Graphics: Comment (Murrell 2013)
• Graphical Criticism: Some Historical Notes (Wickham 2013)
• Tradeoffs in Information Graphics (Gelman and Unwin 2013)

Maps

- Visualizing uncertainty in areal data with bivariate choropleth maps, map pixelation and glyph rotation (Lucchesi and Wikle 2017)

Scatterplot

- The Many Faces of a Scatterplot (Cleveland and McGill 1984)

• The early origins and development of the scatterplot (Friendly and Denis 2005)

Dot plots

- Dot Plots: A Useful Alternative to Bar Charts (Robbins 2006)

3D charts

- The Pseudo Third Dimension (Haemer 1951)

Teaching pedagogy

- Correlational Analysis and Interpretation: Graphs Prevent Gaffes (Peden 2001)

• Numbers, Pictures, and Politics: Teaching Research Methods Through Data Visualizations (Rom 2015)
• Data Analysis and Data Visualization as Active Learning in Political Science (Henshaw and Meinke 2018)

Software

Excel

- Effective Data Visualization: The Right Chart for the Right Data (Evergreen 2016)

R

- Data Visualization (Healy 2018)

• Data Visualization with R (Kabacoff 2018)
• ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis (Wickham 2009)
• Fundamentals of Data Visualization (Wilke 2019)
• R Graphics Cookbook (Chang 2020)

Stata

- A Visual Guide to Stata Graphics (Mitchell 2012)

Changelog:- 2021-03-01: Add 'Better Data Visualizations'

• 2020-08-03: Add 'Ten Guidelines for Better Tables'
• 2020-07-14: Add 'Designing Graphs for Decision-Makers' and 'A Probabilistic Grammar of Graphics' (ht: Simon Straubinger)