Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction

"Innovative and extraordinarily well-written."-Jeremy Freese, Stanford University "Healy's prose is clear and direct. I came away from this book with a much better understanding of both visualizations and R."-Neal Caren, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill "Kieran Healy has written a wonderful book that fills an important niche in an increasingly crowded landscape of materials about software in R. Data Visualization is clear, beautifully formatted, and full of careful insights."-Brandon Stewart, Princeton University "Healy provides a unique introduction to the process of visualizing quantitative data, offering a remarkably coherent treatment that will appeal to novices and advanced analysts alike. There is no other book quite like this."-Thomas J. Leeper, London School of Economics "Data Visualization is a brilliant book that not only teaches the reader how to visualize data but also carefully considers why data visualization is essential for good social science. The book is broadly relevant, beautifully rendered, and engagingly written. It is easily accessible for students at any level and will be an incredible teaching resource for courses on research methods, statistics, and data visualization. It is packed full of clear-headed and sage insights."-Becky Pettit, University of Texas at Austin "Healy's fun and readable book is unusual in covering the `why do' as well as the `how to' of data visualization, demonstrating how dataviz is a key step in all stages of social science-from theory construction to measurement to modeling and interpretation of analyses-and giving readers the tools to integrate visualization into their own work."-Andrew Gelman, author of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do "Finally! A data visualization guide that is simultaneously practical and elegant. Healy combines the beauty and insight of Tufte with the concrete helpfulness of Stack Exchange. Data Visualization is brimming with insights into how quantitative analysts can use visualization as a tool for understanding and communication. A must-read for anyone who works with data."-Elizabeth Bruch, University of Michigan "[Healy's] prose is engaging and chatty, and the style of instruction is unpretentious and practical . . . This single volume represents an excellent entry point for those wishing to upskill their abilities in data visualization."---Paul Cuffe, IEEE Transactions