TOPIC 7:

Spatial Data
Visualisation
MIS 7119 - Geographical Information
Systems and Remote Sensing

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119 1

Spatial Data Visualisation
•  What is Visualisation?

•  Visualisation is any technique for creating images,

diagrams, or animations to communicate a message.

•  Visualization through visual imagery has been an

effective way to communicate both abstract and
concrete ideas since the dawn of humanity.

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  What is Visualisation? Contd..:

•  We remember and manage everything better if we

label, tag, summarise and group them.

•  This enables us to establish patterns, highlight insights,

and point us to the rather would-be hidden that are
not obvious to observe.

•  Visualisation increases our understanding, and the better

our understanding, the more data we crave for.

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Why Visualise?:

•  We live in a data-rich world where technology is

advancing at an enormous pace!
•  The practice of Visualisation is useful for the following
reasons, among others.

o  Communicate information - Some forms of data (e.g.

graphical representations) are more effective as a
means of communication than others (e.g. textual
files).

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Why Visualise?:
o  Visualisation can provide a quick, high level
summary of the main information contained in the
data. It transforms the invisible to the visible.
o 

o  Support decisions - visualisation can provide quick

answers and can improve situational awareness,
hence leading to faster and timely decisions.

o  Increased efficiency - a well designed map or graph

can be understood easily and quickly compared to
reading pages of numbers of textual reports.
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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Why Visualise?
o  Identify and act on emerging trends - data indicating
unexpected patterns can be identified quickly and
can also lead to more questions and new discoveries.

o  Manipulate and interact directly with data - users can

show the same data in multiple dimensions by
controlling and manipulating how and what is being
displayed.

o  Analysis - Analyse data relationships to find

meaningful stories (visual analytics)

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Why Visualise?
o  With so many measurements, simply looking at the data
fails to provide an informative account. However
visualisation gives an instant overall picture of data
based on graphical presentation or numerical
summarization irrespective to the number of data
points.

o  Helps make inference and predict relations of variables.

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119

Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Important Aspects for Visualisation :

o  10 key elements necessary for good data

visualization to allow quick user interpretation, and
for ease of putting data into context
o Indication of Clear Headings and Keys.
o Highlight of Obvious Trends.
o Simplification of data values
o Drawing of Relevant Comparisons.
o Usage of sufficient Data/Evidence
o Summarization of of Key Points.

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Important Aspects for Data Visualisation :

•  Key elements for good data visualization Contd..…

o Usage of design elements/ aesthetics. …
o Consolidation of Information into simple outputs.
o Usage of widely understood structures (such as
bar graphs, pie charts, line graphs, etc.)
o Computation and comparison of data averages
o Computation of data variably
o Provision of output in usable formats

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Common Techniques of Data Visualisation:
o  Maps (heat maps, geographic maps, etc.)
o  Graphs / Charts (line, bar, or pie)
o  Plots (Box, bubble or scatter)
o  Diagrams
o  Summaries / Reports
•  Choice of appropriate specific technique dependent
on the nature of data you are working with.

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Majors Forms of Data Classification :

•  At the highest level of classification, two kinds of data

exist: (Refer to Topic 5 for Data sub-classifications).

•  Quantitative data:

•  Deals with count of numbers and things you can

measure objectively (Dimensions such as height,
width, length, temperature, humidity, area, volume
etc).

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Majors Forms of Data Classification Contd..:

•  Qualitative data:

•  Deals with characteristics and descriptors that

can't be easily measured, but can be observed
and described subjectively

•  Qualitative Data Examples : Object classes and

subclasses, textures, location name, color, gender
etc.).

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Data Visualisation by Graphing:

•  There are numerous graphing options when it comes to

presentation of Geospatial data.

•  Below are some of the options to represent geospatial

statistical data:
o  Pie charts
o  Bar graphs
o  Statistical maps
o  Histograms
o  Frequency polygons.
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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Pie Charts:

World
population by
percentage

Credit: AnalyseMath

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Spatial Data Visualisation
•  Bar Charts:
Bar Diagram: Shows categorical / grouped data as rectangular
bars, presenting each group against a scale of count for each
category.

Credit: AnalyseMath
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Spatial Data Visualisation
Data Visualisation – Categorical Variables

Example: A Bar Chart

showing monthly
observation data for
tourists visiting a resort
(left)

A Divided Bar Chart

(right) splits up month
data to show age group
data for the tourists
recorded each month.
Credit: BBC Bitesize
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
Spatial Data Visualisation
Frequency Distribution
Consider a data set of 26 children of ages 1-6 years. The frequency
distribution of variable ‘age’ can be tabulated as follows:
Frequency Distribution of Age

Age 1 2 3 4 5 6
Frequency 5 3 7 5 4 2
Grouped Frequency Distribution of Age:

Age Group 1-2 3-4 5-6

Frequency 8 12 6

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119

Spatial Data Visualisation
Cumulative Frequency
Cumulative frequency of data in previous page

Age 1 2 3 4 5 6
Frequency 5 3 7 5 4 2
Cumulative Frequency 5 8 15 20 24 26

Age Group 1-2 3-4 5-6

Frequency 8 12 6
Cumulative Frequency 8 20 26

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119

Spatial Data Visualisation
Data Presentation
Two types of statistical presentation of data:
Ø  Graphical Presentation
Ø  Numerical Presentation.
Graphical Presentation: We look for the overall pattern and for
striking deviations from that pattern. Over all pattern usually
described by shape, center, and spread of the data. An individual
value that falls outside the overall pattern is called an outlier.

Ø  Bar diagram and Pie charts are used for categorical variables.

Ø  Histogram, stem and leaf and Box-plot are used for numerical
variable.

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119

Spatial Data Visualisation
Methods of Center Measurement
q  Center measurement is a summary measure of the overall level of a dataset

q  Commonly used methods are mean, median, mode, geometric mean etc.
Mean: The mean is obtained by summing up all the observation and dividing by
number of observations.
For example. Given numbers: 20, 30, 40

Mean = (20 + 30 + 40) / 3 = 30.

Notation : Let x1 , x2, ... xn are n observations of a variable
x. Then the mean of this variable,
n

x + x + ... + xn ∑x i
x= 1 2 = i =1
n n
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
 Spatial Data Visualisation
Methods of Center Measurement
Median: This is the middle value in an ordered sequence of observations.

Ø  That is, to find the median we need to order the data set and then find
the middle value.

Ø  In case of an even number of observations the average of the two
middle most values is the median.

For example: To find the median of {9, 3, 6, 7, 5},

we first sort the data giving {3, 5, 6, 7, 9}, then choose the middle value 6.

If the number of observations is even, e.g., {9, 3, 6, 7, 5, 2}, then the median is
the average of the two middle values from the sorted sequence, in this case:
(5 + 6) / 2 = 5.5.
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
Spatial Data Visualisation
Methods of Center Measurement
Mode: This is the value that is observed most frequently.

Ø  The mode is undefined for sequences in which no observation
is repeated.

For example: Given the set of numbers: {9, 3, 6, 7, 5, 3},

Mode = 3

Ø  In a case where we have {9, 3, 6, 7, 5},

the mode of this set is unobservable

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119

Spatial Data Visualisation
Mean or Median
The median is less sensitive to outliers (extreme scores) than the
mean and thus a beLer measure than the mean for highly
skewed distributions, e.g. family income.
Ø  For example mean of 20, 30, 40, and 990 is
(20 + 30 + 40 + 990) / 4 = 270.
Ø  The median of these four observations is:
(30 + 40) / 2 = 35.
Here 3 observations out of 4 lie between 20 - 40. So, the mean
270 really fails to give a realistic picture of the major part of the
data. It is influenced by extreme value 990.
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
 Spatial Data Visualisation
Methods of Variability Measurement:
Variability (or dispersion) measures the amount of scaLer
in a dataset.

Commonly used methods: range, variance, standard deviation,

interquartile range, coefficient of variation etc.

Range: This is the difference between the largest and the smallest
observations.
Ø  i.e. Given the following numbers; 10, 5, 2, 100

Range = (100 - 2 ) = 98.

Ø It’s a crude measure of variability.

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
 Spatial Data Visualisation
Methods of Variability Measurement:
Variance: The variance of a set of observations is the average of the squares of
the deviations of the observations from their mean. In symbols, the variance of
the n observations x1, x2,…xn is

2 ( x1 − x ) 2 + .... + ( xn − x ) 2
S =
n −1
Variance of 5, 7, 3? Mean is (5+7+3)/3 = 5 and the variance is

(5 − 5) 2 + (3 − 5) 2 + (7 − 5) 2
=4
3 −1
Standard Deviation; σ : This is determined by getting the square root of the
variance.
Ø  i.e. The standard deviation of the above example is the Square root of 4 = 2.
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
Spatial Data Visualisation
Methods of Variability Measurement:
Quartiles: Data can be divided into four regions that cover the total range of
observed values. Cut points for these regions are known as quartiles.

In notations, quartiles of a data is the ((n+1) / 4) qth observation of the data,

where q is the desired quartile and n is the number of observations of data.

Ø  The first quartile (Q1) is the first 25% of the data.

Ø  The second quartile (Q2) is between the 25th and 50th percentage points in
the data.
Ø  The upper bound of Q2 is the median.
Ø  The third quartile (Q3) is the 25% of the data lying between the median
and the 75% cut point in the data.

Q1 is the median of the first half of the ordered observations and Q3 is the
median of the second half of the ordered observations.
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
Spatial Data Visualisation
Methods of Variability Measurement:
Example: Find the Quartile in the following number
sequence:
3 6 7 11 13 22 30 40 44 50 52 61 68 80 94
Q1 Q2 Q3
The first quartile is Q1=11. The second quartile is Q2=40
(This is also the Median.) The third quartile is Q3=61.

In the following example Q1= ((15+1)/4)1 =4th observation of the

data. The 4th observation is 11. So Q1 is of this data is 11.

Inter-quartile Range: This is the difference between Q3 and Q1.

Inter-quartile range of the example above is:
61 – 11 = 50
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
Spatial Data Visualisation
Deciles and Percentiles
Deciles: If data is ordered and divided into 10 parts, then cut points are called
Deciles
Percentiles: If data is ordered and divided into 100 parts, then cut points are
called Percentiles. 25th percentile is the Q1, 50th percentile is the Median (Q2)
and the 75th percentile of the data is Q3.

In notations, percentiles of a data is the ((n+1)/100)pth observation of the data,

where p is the desired percentile and n is the number of observations of data.

Coefficient of Variation: The standard deviation of data divided by it’s mean. It is

usually expressed in percent.

σ
Coefficient of Variation = ×100
x
James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119
Spatial Data Visualisation
Five Number Summary
Five Number Summary: The five number summary of a
distribution consists:

Ø  The smallest (Minimum) observation,

Ø  The first quartile (Q1),
Ø  The median(Q2),
Ø  The third quartile,
Ø  The largest (Maximum) observation written in order
from smallest to largest.

James Isagara Kisoro Makerere University MIS 7119

 End of

TOPIC 7

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