K. Healy: Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction [Book Review]

This book offers a hands-on master class in building effective data graphics using the ggplot package for the R language. While the implied audience is researchers in the social sciences, there is a lot of practical wisdom here for anyone who works with numerical data. This book treats both the theoretical principles of effective data visualization design (in the mode of Edward Tufte, Stephen Few, Alberto Cairo, and others) as well as concrete guidance on how to integrate such wisdom into a slick data-analysis workflow in the R ecosystem. This practitioner-oriented approach is a very welcomed addition to the literature. By covering both the whys and the hows of data visualization, this single volume swiftly equips researchers to build compelling graphics from their numerical data. The book itself is attractively typeset. One commendable feature is the direct integration of many graphics alongside the corresponding passage of text, by setting them in the wide scholar’s margins. This richly graphical approach makes the lessons engaging, tangible, and enjoyable to read. The book ends with a generous Appendix, which is a compendium of various productivity-oriented tips for working in the R and tidyverse ecosystems. This single volume represents an excellent entry point for those wishing to enhance their capabilities in data visualization. Much of the relevant theoretical work is covered explicitly, and the rest is clearly signposted. The software tools presented are mainstream, open source, and powerful, and the author’s enthusiasm for the ecosystem is infectious. There is only one topic that felt slightly overlooked: the importance of choosing appropriate ranges and divisions for the axes of a graph. Indeed, many of the figures in the book seemed a bit too cluttered with excessive gridlines and tick marks. These are minor gripes, though. Overall, the book is a welcome and timely volume that is full of practical wisdom for producing attractive and effective technical graphics.