Visualization Tools, Libraries, Data Sets, and Further Resources
Existing Tools for Visualization and Data Analysis
Visualization tools — data exploration and visualization in dashboards:
- Tableau (Visualization environment, Dashboards)
- Visualize Free (Online, Dashboards)
- Glue (Python; multi-dimensional linked-data exploration)
- InstantClue (Visualization design and data exploration environment)
- Voyager 2 (Online, data exploration tool)
- QlikView (Visualization environment, Dashboards)
- Power BI (Visualization environment, Dashboards)
- Keshif Online (Online, Dashboards)
Visualization tools — authoring of individual charts:
- DataWrapper (Visualization environment, single chart)
- RawGraphs (Visualization environment, single chart)
- Make-a-vis (Visualization environment, single or multiple charts)
- Lyra (Online, visualization design environment)
Visualization tools — graph and network data:
- yFiles (+ yEd) (Graph drawing libraries and tools; several platforms)
- Gephi (Network analysis and visualization environment)
- Graphia (Network analysis and visualization environment)
- Cytoscape (Environment for complex networks and multivariate data analysis; several platforms)
- OriGraph (Online graph data wrangling tool)
- kepler.gl (Environment for large-scale geospatial and network analysis; online)
- Nomic Atlas (Environment for AI/ML-based analysis of text, image, and multidimensional data collections; online)
Visualization tools — other specific data types and representations:
- VoyantTools (Environment for text analysis; online)
- StoryMapJS (Authoring tool for map-based storytelling; online)
- TimelineJS (Authoring tool for timeline-based storytelling; online)
- Heatmapper (Environment for geographical map and heatmap visualization; online)
- EdWordle (Authoring tool for word clouds; online)
- Jigsaw (Visual analytic environment for document and multivariate data; several platforms, including WebJigsaw)
- Inviwo (Scientific visualization environment; several platforms, including C++ and Python)
Data analysis and visualization tools:
- Word Rain (Python; semantic-preserving word cloud-like visualization of texts and document collections)
- OpenRefine (Java; data preprocessing/wrangling)
- Datasette (Python; data preprocessing/wrangling and exploratory data analysis)
Interactive data mining / ML / AI tools:
- Orange (Machine learning and visual analysis environment; Python)
- Textable (Text mining extensions for Orange)
- KNIME Analytics Platform (Interactive data mining environment; several platforms)
- Weka (Interactive data mining environment; Java)
- ELKI (Interactive data mining environment; Java)
Programming Libraries for Visualization and Data Analysis
Data analysis and visualization libraries:
- Word Rain (Python; semantic-preserving word cloud-like visualization of texts and document collections)
- pyLDAvis (Python; visualization of topic models)
- Scattertext (Python; visualization of text document collections)
- t-SNE (Python and many other languages; dimensionality reduction for multivariate/high-dimensional data)
- UMAP (Python; a recent DR approach comparable, or in some cases, preferred to t-SNE)
- Further manifold learning and DR techniques (scikit-learn) (Python)
- densVis (Python; DR for density-preserving data visualization)
- NetworkX (Python; analysis and visualization of network data)
- py3plex (Python; analysis and visualization of multiplex and multilayer network data)
- muxViz (R; analysis and visualization of multilayer network data)
- ScanPy (Python; analysis and visualization of biological data)
- Yellowbrick (Python; visualization for machine learning)
Visualization libraries — JavaScript (general-purpose):
- D3 (JavaScript)
- D3 Discovery (Plugin catalog for D3)
- Observable Plot (JavaScript; from the authors of D3)
- plotly.js (JavaScript; based on D3)
- billboard.js (JavaScript; based on D3)
- vis.js (JavaScript)
- Chart.js (JavaScript)
- ApexCharts.js (JavaScript; based on D3)
- Google Charts (JavaScript)
- Regl Scatterplot (JavaScript; high-performance WebGL-based scatterplots)
- Vega (JavaScript; based on D3)
- Vega-Lite (JavaScript; based on D3 and Vega)
- nivo (JavaScript; based on D3 and React)
- Victory (JavaScript; based on D3 and React)
- Highcharts (JavaScript)
Visualization libraries — JavaScript (specific data types and representations):
- Rickshaw (Temporal data; JavaScript; based on D3)
- Leaflet (Geospatial data (maps); JavaScript)
- Mapbox GL JS (Geospatial data (maps); JavaScript)
- Cytoscape.js (Graph/network data; JavaScript)
- Sigma (Graph/network data; JavaScript)
- WebCoLa (cola.js) (Graph/network data; JavaScript; compatible with D3 and Cytoscape.js)
Visualization libraries — Python:
- Dash (Python; generates a web-based dashboard using plotly.js; also available for R, Julia, and F#)
- plotly.py (Python; generates a web-based visualization using plotly.js; also R, Julia, F#, and Matlab)
- HoloViz (Python; a set of high-level packages for interactive visualization)
- Bokeh (Python; generates a web-based bashboard)
- Chartify (Python; generates a web-based visualization using Bokeh)
- Altair (Python; generates a web-based visualization using Vega and Vega-Lite)
- mpld3 (Python; generates a web-based visualization using D3)
- Folium (Python; generates a web-based geographical map using Leaflet.js)
- Geoplot (Python; geospatial data (maps))
Visualization libraries — other languages and platforms:
- Processing (Environment for graphics programming; several platforms)
- Improvise (Java)
- JFreeChart (Java)
- Shiny (R; generates a web-based visualization)
- Shiny Dashboard (R; generates a web-based visualization using Shiny)
Visualization libraries — statistical and scientific visualizations:
- ggplot2 (R; statistical graphics)
- Matplotlib (Python; statistical graphics and scientific plotting, static plots with very limited interaction options)
- Seaborn (Python; statistical graphics, based on Matplotlib)
- Chaco (Python; statistical graphics and scientific plotting, based on Matplotlib, further interaction options)
- Veusz (Python; statistical graphics and scientific plotting)
- PyVista (Python; scientific visualization)
Visualization libraries no longer in active development (not recommended for assignments):
- JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit (JavaScript)
- Flare - Data Visualization for the Web (ActionScript)
- JUNG Java Universal Network/Graph Framework (Java)
- InfoVis Toolkit (Java)
- JChart (Java)
- XmdvTool (Qt)
Data Sets
Scientific publication data:
- Vispubdata: Visualization Publication Dataset
- VIS30K (31+ thousand images from IEEE VIS conferences)
- arXiv Dataset
- hdblp: historical data of the dblp collection
Text data:
- The Brexit Blog Corpus
- Project Gutenberg eBooks - Offline Catalogs and Feeds
- 4000 CNN articles from 2023
- OpinRank Data - Reviews From TripAdvisor & Edmunds
- Enron Email Dataset
- News Commentary Corpus
- PHEME Rumour Scheme Dataset
- Multi-Domain Sentiment Dataset
- 200,000+ Jeopardy! Questions
- European Parliament Proceedings Parallel Corpus 1996-2011
- Open Parallel Corpora
- The Language Archive
- CLARIN corpora of academic texts
- Språkbanken (University of Gothenburg) language resources
- 1 Billion Word Language Model Benchmark
- CC-100: Monolingual Datasets from Web Crawl Data
- The Pile: An 800GB Dataset of Diverse Text for Language Modeling
- OpenWebTextCorpus
- Nordic Tweet Stream
- 20 Open Datasets for Natural Language Processing
Graph and network data:
- Gephi sample datasets
- Graphia example datasets
- YoutubeGraph-Dyn: An evolving graph dataset from YouTube interactions
- Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection
- BigDND: Big Dynamic Network Data
- ICON: Colorado Index of Complex Networks
- Network Repository: An Interactive Scientific Network Data Repository
Other and mixed data types:
- Towards A Quantitative Survey of Dimension Reduction Techniques - Datasets
- IMDb Non-Commercial Datasets
- Amazon Review Data
- Yelp Open Dataset
- Netflix Prize Data
- Stack Exchange Data Explorer
- OpenStreetMap data
- SuiteSparse Matrix Collection (formerly the University of Florida Sparse Matrix Collection)
Miscellaneous data set collections and search tools:
- Visual Analytics Benchmarks Repository
- UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository
- Awesome Public Datasets
- KDNuggets Datasets for Data Science, Machine Learning, AI & Analytics
- Kaggle Datasets
- Google Research Datasets
- Google Research Dataset Search
- OpenML data sets and collections
- Harvard Dataverse
- European Data
- Swedish National Data Service
- Sveriges Dataportal (Swedish open data)
Tips, Tricks, and Further Tools
Tools and papers for choosing a color map:
- ColorBrewer 2.0
- Diverging Color Maps for Scientific Visualization
- Rainbow Color Map (Still) Considered Harmful
- Somewhere Over the Rainbow: An Empirical Assessment of Quantitative Colormaps
- Rainbow Colormaps Are Not All Bad
- Rainbow Colormaps: What are They Good and Bad for?
- Color Blindness Simulator
- Coblis — Color Blindness Simulator
Further interactive tools:
- SUS Analysis Toolkit (Online; usability questionnaire generation and analysis)
Further Interesting URLs
- InfoVis:Wiki, the Information Visualization community platform
- A Tour through the Visualization Zoo
- Information is Beautiful
- A Visual Bibliography of Tree Visualization
- A Visual Survey of Visualization Techniques for Time-Oriented Data
- A Visual Survey of Text Visualization Techniques
- A Visual Survey in Enhancing Trust in Machine Learning (ML) Models with Visualization
- Quantified Self Viz Contest Entries
- Overview of Data Visualizations and Infographics
- From Data to Viz + The D3.js Graph Gallery
- Selection of Data Visualisation Tools
- Data Visualization for Human Perception
- Visual Perception
- Exploring Preattentive Attributes
- Nightingale — The Journal of the Data Visualization Society
- Save the Pies for Dessert (critique of the pie chart visualization technique)
- Visualization Resources
- Data Visualization Teaching and Learning Materials
- Mastering the Information Age: Solving Problems with Visual Analytics (Free Book)
- Progressive Data Analysis: Roadmap and Research Agenda (Free Book)
- Search User Interfaces (Free Book)