- Be precise
- Make science look fun
In order to lean a bit more towards the latter, people created infographics and infographics tools. It's like the kind of graphs you read in newspapers or on posters. You may get close to the chart itself if you're really handy with Stata, but it takes way to much time for the simple chart you get. There are many tools that may do that easier and better. There are also much more artistic contribution you'll read about on the cool infographics blog. And be sure to check out this Swiss website on data visualizations.
The drawback: which tool will do what you want and exactly what you want? Basically, you need to be able to customize and add data. That brings you terribly close to Stata, doesn't it. Yet sometimes, these tools will really make it happen:
- Tableau: it's the more sophisticated package, available in a free ("public"), paid desktop and server version. You get it. Consultancy stuff. Basically it's all about two axis and a third dimension expressed in colours or size of dots. Also has annoying interactive dashboards we do not need.
- Many eyes: it's IBM software, so it should eventually find its way into SPSS. Nice charts, hard way to get there though. Worth a try and looks professional.
- Infogr.am: I haven't really figured out. It makes nice graphs, most importantly including the matrix charts I love (coloured little people representing counts). It's beta and buggy at the moment, and quite inflexible. Like how on earth do you change the shapes in the matrix chart? I do not know.
- Pik to chart: this is only the lay-out part: nice fonts, few charts really.
Word clouds and social media
Network visualizations
- Gephi: network visualizations. I don't do that. Much like Graph Viz, but I suppose more intuitive.
