One of the key parts of data science, particularly in social science, is visualization. I think our data and analysis is meaningless without being able to communicate it and use it for policy change. This last week I began working for INN’s nerds team, and one of my first tasks has been to work with those member organizations looking to visualize their work.
INN offers members technology services, including help transforming their news and investigative websites with Largo, a WordPress framework INN nerds built for news organizations. So, in addition to recommending data viz tools that are easy to use and interactive, our members also need tools that are WordPress compatible.
This post is not about a tool that many of our members use. In fact, I’m going to write a post about tools I would recommend for our members, especially those who do not have a developer on hand. This post is about Wp-D3, the WordPress plugin for d3.js. I was so excited to learn that this plugin exists! D3 has become the go-to data viz tool - for those who are able to work with javascript, anyway. I am in the process of learning how to work with d3.js, so I followed this tutorial to learn how to use Wp-D3.