Edward Tufte, in his seminal book on the subject of data visualization, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, outlines several principles of "graphic excellence" to keep in mind:
Before you create your visualization, consider what aspect of your data you'd most like to highlight and what points you wish to communicate to your audience. Choosing the right type of graphic (bar chart, line graph, box and whisker plot, etc.) to use is key. Several online resources can help you determine how to best represent your data visually:
Physician John Snow's map of the 1854 London cholera outbreak showed that the disease was not caused or spread by "bad air" but through contaminated water sources. The map changed the way public health information is communicated.
Johnson, S. (2006). The ghost map: The story of London’s most terrifying epidemic and how it changed science, cities, and the modern world. New York: Riverhead Hardcover.
