Data visualization is the art of turning raw data into pretty pictures that make the business people happy. It's a way to take all those boring numbers and turn them into something that looks like it belongs on a Silicon Valley startup's website.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I spent all day working on data visualizations for the quarterly report, and now I have a headache from staring at colorful charts and graphs."

• "The marketing team keeps asking for more data visualizations, but I'd rather be optimizing our database queries."

If you actually want to learn more...

• Communal Dashboard by Martin Fowler: Learn about the trend of putting data visualizations on big screens around the office so everyone can pretend to be data-driven.

• How to replace a pie chart by David Robinson: Discover why pie charts are the Comic Sans of data visualization and how to make better charts using R and ggplot2.

• Data-Driven Domination: How Top Companies Leverage Data for Competitive Advantage by Leon Palafox: See how companies like John Deere are using data visualization and machine learning to crush their competition, even in industries that have nothing to do with technology.

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.