[MUSIC] Hi, I'm Amy Peirce. And at PwC, I'm lucky enough to use advanced data and analytics to bring insights to our clients every day. In this video, we're going to talk about data visualization. Data and analytics is all about bringing client challenges to life so we can overcome them by taking data, whether structured or unstructured and turning it into usable information and insights. All the sophisticated data and analytics in the world won't matter if it can't be consumed by an end user or decision maker. Think about the data and analytics framework that we talked about earlier in the course. Once you gather the data and perform your analysis, you need to be able to present that data in a way that make sense to your end user. In other words, you have to visualize the data. Let's start with a basic principle of data visualization. Take a look at the table on the screen, how many numbers are greater than one? Do you have it? Now tell me how many numbers are greater than one. Visualization doesn't have to be complex. In fact, visualization is all about making complex insights simple. Simply highlighting the numbers greater than one helped you solve the problem quickly. And that's data visualization in a nutshell, the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format. We illustrate data with graphics and communicate information clearly and effectively to users. It's nothing new. For centuries, people have depended on visual representations such as charts and maps to understand information more easily and quickly. As more and more data is collected and analyzed, decision makers at all levels of the organization welcome data visualization software that enables them to see analytical results presented visually. It helps them to find relevance among millions of variables, communicate concepts and hypothesis to others, and even predict the future. Visualization is important because the brain processes visual information faster. Users can spot patterns or trends which are not obvious in a flat structure. Information can be interpreted by any audience. Decision making is faster and cheaper. Simply put, data visualization is just a technique that helps everyone see and understand the analysis that is going on. For example, let's say you want look through customer behaviors based on their location. You would have to go through tables and tables of customer segments to identify different behaviors by zip codes. It would take a lot of time to sort through all that analysis and data. If you plot that data on a map and pinpoint stores or locations where specific customer behaviors are occurring, you can use this to develop strategies that attract specific customers to specific locations. You can now take that map into a meeting with your client and show him or her where all their stores are overlaid with the data on their customers. And you're able to tell a story that will allow your client to adjust their business strategy. We're seeing that data and analytics today is underpinning every kind of business challenge. Being able to visualize data allows you to present an analysis so that anyone can understand what the information means. In the next couple of videos you'll get to see some examples of how we use data visualization tools to solve real business problems. [MUSIC]
