Resources

This page collects useful resources for data visualization and plotting in the context of building science and indoor environmental quality.

The goal is to provide a starting point for:

• learning fundamentals of good visualization
• going deeper into R and Python plotting ecosystems
• finding reference material for specific tools and topics

Over time, this page will be updated with more recommendations and notes.

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Reading

General data visualization

These books focus on visualization principles rather than specific tools:

• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information – Edward Tufte
  https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi

• Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction – Kieran Healy
  https://socviz.co/

• Fundamentals of Data Visualization – Claus O. Wilke
  https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/

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R and ggplot2

Resources for R visualization:

• R for Data Science (2e) – Wickham, Çetinkaya-Rundel & Grolemund
  https://r4ds.hadley.nz

• ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis (3e) – Wickham, Navarro & Pedersen
  https://ggplot2-book.org/

• R Graphics Cookbook – Winston Chang
  https://r-graphics.org/

• The official ggplot2 documentation
  https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/

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Python visualization

Resources for Python plotting:

• Python Data Science Handbook – Jake VanderPlas
  https://jakevdp.github.io/PythonDataScienceHandbook/

• Python for Data Analysis – Wes McKinney
  https://wesmckinney.com/book/

• Matplotlib official documentation
  https://matplotlib.org/stable/index.html

• Matplotlib tutorials
  https://matplotlib.org/stable/tutorials/index.html

• Seaborn documentation
  https://seaborn.pydata.org/

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Packages

R

Core R plotting ecosystem:

• ggplot2 https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org/

• patchwork https://patchwork.data-imaginist.com/

• viridis https://sjmgarnier.github.io/viridis/

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Python

Core Python plotting ecosystem:

• matplotlib
  https://matplotlib.org/

• pandas
  https://pandas.pydata.org/

• seaborn
  https://seaborn.pydata.org/

• plotly
  https://plotly.com/python/

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Other useful resources

Reproducible research & publishing

• Quarto documentation
  https://quarto.org/

• R Markdown
  https://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/

• Jupyter Notebook documentation
  https://jupyter.org/documentation

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Color and accessibility

• ColorBrewer palettes
  https://colorbrewer2.org/

• Accessible color palettes
  https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/non-text-contrast.html

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Inspiration & galleries

• FlowingData
  https://flowingdata.com/

• From Data to Viz
  https://www.data-to-viz.com/

• Observable HG Blog
  https://observablehq.com/blog