Data

This data is updated daily for all the 10,000+ data points shown here.

If you'd like to know more about what data was used and what choices made, read on

Team
The Visualization Universe
was created by Anna Vital and Mark Vital from Adioma and Alexander Vushkan with the assistance of the Google News Lab: Simon Rogers and Alberto Cairo for art direction.
Contact
Contact us at visualuniverse@adioma.com for questions about this project.

The Data

Processing over 10,000 data points on data visualization-related searches, we seek to find the current state of data visualization as we think of it. We update this visualization with fresh data every day automatically. This way we hope to track the interest in top visualization types, tools, and books. Check back often to see what changes may happen in the future.

The first element colored   in each grid sets the baseline for the rest of the grid because search interest is a relative value. The entities that are outliers are colored in bright red  . Hovering above each search interest bar graph and sparkline will reveal the exact search interest numbers.

 

Charts

We compiled a list of recognized chart forms referencing Wikipedia and other authoritative lists including Duke University's and Anna Vital's infographic "How To Think Visually". The current compilation contains 56 unique chart types. We did not include chart orientations as unique chart types since the way they display information is the same in principle (for example, a radial bar chart is not a separate form of bar chart for our purposes). All charts are ranked by search interest over the last year. Search interest is a relative value, with 100 meaning the peak of popularity for a given term. The charts are also ranked by change in search interest over the previous year. The change is best seen in comparison to current year’s average and last year’s average which are displayed for each chart when you click on one.

Books

We searched for the most authoritative books on the topic of data visualization and infographics specifically. The factors we used to determine popularity are Amazon reviews. We also referenced Andy Kirk’s list of 131 visualization titles.

Tools

We looked for the most searched for tools for data visualization and infographics specifically. We referenced Andy Kirk's list of 300 tools and Lisa Charlotte Rost's experiment driven list. Our criterion was that a tool must be able to generate an infographic or a data visualization from start to finish. Tools that cannot generate a complete infographic or data visualization were not included. There are two categories of tools: generic and specialized. Generic tools are those that can help generate not only infographics or data visualizations but have other non related uses as well (for example, Microsoft Excel is a general purpose tool for creating spreadsheets, and it also can build graphs). Specialized tools are those used for infographics or data visualization only.