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180 Part II • Descriptive Analytics

Application Case 4.4 (Continued)

Spotfire software’s visual and computational from the data that was previously not easily
analysis approach provides the CVC at Dana-Farber attainable.”
and the research community at large with a bet-
ter understanding of the cancer vaccine clinical Questions for Discussion
trials landscape and enables rapid insight into the 1. How did Dana-Farber Cancer Institute use TIBCO
hotspots of cancer vaccine activity, as well as into Spotfire to enhance information reporting and
the identification of neglected cancers. visualization?
“The whole field of medical research is going 2. What were the challenge, the proposed solution,
through an enormous transformation, in part and the obtained results?
driven by information technology,” adds Brusic.
“Using a tool like Spotfire for analysis is a prom- Sources: TIBCO Spotfire, Customer Success Story, “TIBCO Spotfire
ising area in this field because it helps integrate Provides Dana-Farber Cancer Institute with Unprecedented Insight
into Cancer Vaccine Clinical Trials,” spotfire.tibco.com/~/media/
information from multiple sources, ask specific content-center/case-studies/dana-farber.ashx (accessed March
questions, and rapidly extract new knowledge 2013); and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, dana-farber.org.

sectiOn 4.3 revieW QuestiOns
1. What is data visualization? Why is it needed?
2. What are the historical roots of data visualization?
3. Carefully analyze Charles Joseph Minard’s graphical portrayal of Napoleon’s march.
Identify and comment on all of the information dimensions captured in this ancient
diagram.
4. Who is Edward Tufte? Why do you think we should know about his work?
5. What do you think the “next big thing” is in data visualization?

4.4 DiffeRent types of ChARts AnD gRAphs
Often end users of business analytics systems are not sure what type of chart or graph
to use for a specific purpose. Some charts and/or graphs are better at answering certain
types of questions. What follows is a short description of the types of charts and/or
graphs commonly found in most business analytics tools and what types of question that
they are better at answering/analyzing.

Basic Charts and graphs
What follows are the basic charts and graphs that are commonly used for information
visualization.

line ChARt Line charts are perhaps the most frequently used graphical visuals for
time-series data. Line charts (or line graphs) show the relationship between two variables;
they most often are used to track changes or trends over time (having one of the vari-
ables set to time on the x-axis). Line charts sequentially connect individual data points
to help infer changing trends over a period of time. Line charts are often used to show
time-dependent changes in the values of some measure such as changes on a specific
stock price over a 5-year period or changes in the number of daily customer service calls
over a month.

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