Have you heard about data visualisations, wondered what a visualisation is, why they are so popular, or how you can understand them better? Have you asked yourself: what is data visualisation? A data visualisation is a visual representation of data. In other words, a data visualisation shows statistical, numerical data in visual ways, in order to communicate their meanings.你听说过数据可视化，想知道什么是可视化吗？它们为什么如此受欢迎？如何更好地理解它们? 数据可视化是数据的可视化表达方式。换句话说，数据可视化用视觉化的方式显示统计数字和数据，从而更好的表达它们所代表的含义。
Visualisations aim to help people make sense of and explore data. Experts believe representing data in visual ways can help communicate what the data means. It can also allow people the opportunity to analyse and examine large datasets, which would otherwise be difficult to understand.可视化的目的是帮助人们理解和探索数据。专家认为，以视觉方式表示数据有助于数据含义的表达和理解。它也可以让人们有机会分析和研究大型数据集，这些大型数据集通常是很难理解的。
Maybe you have seen or heard the term infographics?你获取已经看到或听到信息图了?
An infographic is similar to a data visualisation, but the two things are not exactly the same. An infographic is designed to tell a particular story to a specific audience. It might include images or information. Usually, it doesn’t include data. It might show more ‘design flair’ than a data visualisation.一个信息图类似于数据可视化,但两者并不完全相同。信息图通常是用来向特定用户讲述一个特别的事情。它可能包括图片或信息，通常它不包含数据。它可能会比数据可视化更能体现“设计天赋”
Pairing Wine and Food搭配葡萄酒和视频
Pairing Wine and Food (→) An example of an infographic.搭配葡萄酒和食品(→)图表的一个例子。
A data visualisation, on the other hand, often presents a dataset with minimal editing, and it aims to make the data more accessible than it is in its raw form. Some data visualisations also aim to make it possible to explore the data on which they’re based. A data visualisation may have been generated automatically from a big data set, such as with Migration in the News (→) , see below, or it may be based on a small data set.另一方面，数据可视化也可能是一个经过简单处理和编辑的数据集，目的是让数据比它的原始形式更容易获取。一些可视化数据是为了能够更好的探索它们背后的数据，这种情况下，数据可以从一个大的数据集自动生成，如下面移民新闻，当然或者它可能是来自一个小的数据集。
Migration in the News移民的新闻
Migration in the News (→) An example of a data visualisation.迁移在新闻(→)数据可视化的一个例子。
Where can we see data visualisations?我们在哪里可以看到可视化数据吗?
The answer is: lots of places! This includes the internet, social media, traditional media like newspapers and magazines. On TV, visualisations are often used in news, for example during elections, or in sports programmes. You might receive them through the post in campaigning or advertising material, when graphs or charts are used to convince you of something, or in reports from your bank, pension or other organisations.很多地方都能看到。这包括互联网、社交媒体、传统媒体如报纸和杂志。数据可视化在电视、新闻中经常使用，例如在选举期间，或在体育项目上。你有时会收到一些企业发的活动或广告，如银行、保险等机构发的宣传材料，它们使用图表说服你购买它们的产品或加入它们的活动。
译文：http://seeingdata.org/understa … tion/
原文始发于微信公众号（PPV课数据科学社区）：【译文】什么是数据可视化？
原创文章，作者：ppvke，如若转载，请注明出处：http://www.ppvke.com/archives/14344
