Introducing data visualization

Before diving into building dashboards, it is worth spending some time discussing what data visualization is and its goals. As we mentioned in Chapter 1, Introducing Azure Data Explorer, 90% of today's data is digital and we are generating quintillion bytes of data each day!

Once we have understood our data and identified traits such as trends, variations, seasonality, and anomalies and created forecasts with them, the next step is to present our findings to our audience. This is where data visualization can help. Data visualization is a method that helps facilitate your understanding of your data to your audience, who can have various backgrounds and expertise.

Designing and developing effective data visualizations is an art and requires practice. The types of charts and tiles you use can influence how your data is perceived and bad design decisions could lead to your audience interpreting the data incorrectly.

To illustrate the power...