Tech Topic Connection

         This blog project is focused on data visualization.  Data visualization is important to me as I have aspirations to learn new data visualization and forecasting techniques in order to someday start a data analytics company where we will help small and midsize companies to better understand and “see” their data in a new way which will in turn help them gain new customers retain more of the customers that they already have.   

        By researching this important topic and constructing this blog, I aim to uncover more information about the current state of the data visualization industry as well as where it is going in the future and learning about the newest tools that are built specifically with both data scientists and more importantly the end user in mind.  Modeling data and making charts that are visually appealing is all well and good but unless one can make it simple and easy to digest for the end user, it won’t matter how pretty the visualizations are.  I am setting out to make data easy for anyone to understand and make business decisions on. 

        While data visualization used to be reserved for only data scientists and C-Suite executives, in recent years with the advent of new technology such as Microsoft Power BI, Data visualization has come to the masses. That is not to say that a $99 Black Friday Special Chromebook can run sophisticated data models, however today’s mid-market priced laptops and desktops can usually do pretty well. There is a large correlation between data visualization and modern programming languages such as Python. Python is frequently used to help automate data models and charting features. It can also be used to run scripts that connect data sources to the visualization software.  

As new posts are added to this blog, the authors will be paying special attention to the former posts and attempt to make a connection for the reader to explain the relevance between computing and networking “basics” and data visualization. As the software landscape advances, data visualization techniques will also advance and be able to help users make better data driven decisions at both the office and at home.   

References: 

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2019). Computing technology for all. zyBooks. 

What is Data Visualization? (n.d.). What Is Data Visualization? Retrieved August 13, 2022, from https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/data-visualization/