Visualization helps one understand more about the data in hand. A picture is worth a thousand words. We get a better understanding of the feature space by representing data on a graphical platform. Trends, anomalies, relationships, and other similar patterns help us think more about the possible algorithm and heuristics to use on the given data for a given problem. There can be various levels of abstraction and granularities present in the data. Here's a list of a few standard methods used to visualize data:
Boxplots
Scatter plots
Word clouds
Decision trees
Various social networks analysis tools such as Igraph, MuxViz, NetworkX, and so on
In the next chapters, we'll show you how these help us understand the results better. How to interpret the results is a crucial part of the mining process.
