The subreddit r/dataisbeautiful truly lives up to its name. From global or internet trends to societal issues, this community covers it all in easy-to-understand visualizations that effectively convey otherwise complex information. Each graph, chart, or map has the potential to uncover patterns, expose correlations, or shed light on various topics. No wonder why as of today, over 19M people appreciate this subreddit.

So if you feel that sometimes life is just too difficult to comprehend, hopefully, this list will make you feel at least somewhat at ease knowing that even the most complex things can be summed up in a beautiful visualization.

To learn more about data and data analysis, Bored Panda reached out to Matthew Mayo, a Data Scientist and the Editor-in-Chief of KDnuggets, the seminal online resource for Data Science, Machine Learning, AI, and Analytics. Read the full interview with Matthew below.

More info: kdnuggets.com | Linkedin | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

#1 The Bedrock Geology Of North America

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#2 Bolivia's Infant Mortality Has Dropped Below The World's Average

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#3 The Share Of Latin American Women Going To College And Beyond Has Grown 14x In The Past 50 Years. Men’s Share Is Roughly Ten Years Behind Women’s

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Matthew's interests lie in natural language processing, algorithm design and optimization, unsupervised learning, and automated approaches to machine learning. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science and a graduate diploma in data mining.

So in order to learn more about data, we reached out to Matthew to ask him a few questions relating to the subject. We were curious about how data analysts can effectively identify and address data quality issues in large datasets. Matthew shared: “Data quality issues in large datasets is a major concern in the analytics field, and ever more so with the increasingly larger datasets we continue to amass. Data analysts can effectively identify and address data quality issues in large datasets by employing some of these strategies. Data profiling involves statistical analysis and assessment of data for consistency, uniqueness, and logic to understand the quality of the data. It can be used to get a useful preliminary overview of the data. Data cleaning involves detecting and correcting or removing corrupt, inaccurate, or inconsistent data from a dataset. This helps explicitly remove data points of poor quality from the dataset. Techniques such as data imputation can be used to fill in missing values. Data validation involves checking if the data meets the specific requirements, rules, or norms to ensure the quality and reliability of data. This can ensure that individual data points are in the realm of the expected, or the coherent.

These few strategies, while only a small subset of those available to help analysts identify and address data quality issues in large datasets, can actually get you very far along the road to quality data when employed correctly.The key takeaway: An analyst's time is overwhelmingly spent trying to understand data, in large part to help ensure its quality.”

#4 The Most Streamed Programs

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#5 Top Googled Games In Europe, December 2022

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#6 For The First Time, Fewer Than Half Of Americans Say They “Know God Really Exists” And Have “No Doubts About It”

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KDnuggets is a leading destination for data science, machine learning, AI, and analytics. The site was founded nearly 30 years ago by Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro. KDnuggets creates and publishes original content and shares news, tutorials, and resources from around the internet. It should be every data scientist's first stop of the day. KD stands for Knowledge Discovery. So if you are data-curious, feel free to check out their website.

For more information about data, we asked Matthew to share some best practices for data analysts to ensure accurate and meaningful data visualization and reporting. “Meaningful and accurate data visualization and reporting tend to come down to one thing: impact. Here are a few best practices for making an impact on your work.

Emphasizing the importance of choosing the right visualization may seem overly simplistic, but it's something we should all be reminded of from time to time. Data analysts should choose the type of data visualization that best conveys the information on hand, be it bar charts for comparisons, line graphs for trends, etc. Another way to make your data visualizations have an impact is by maintaining simplicity. A general rule is that visualizations should be as simple as possible since overcomplicating can confuse or mislead the audience. Data should also always be presented with adequate context to help viewers understand the implications of the analysis. Another no-brainer is the attention to detail in your reporting and visualizations. Appropriate use of color, ensuring accurate scale, and including legends and labels when necessary are all easy ways to increase engagement with visualizations and keep a focus on the project's simplicity, as well as the appropriate use of whitespace, headings, and line spacing in a report.

The key takeaway: Simplicity leads to impact,” shared Matthew.

#7 Norway's Oil Fund vs. Top 10 Billionaires

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#8 São Paulo Cut Its Homicide Rate By 90% And Is Now About As Safe As Boston. Mexico City Is Currently Safer Than Dallas And Denver

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#9 Does Healthcare Spending Correlate With Life Expectancy?

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We were also curious to learn about the key skills and qualifications that organizations should look for when hiring a data analyst. Matthew wrote: “The key skills and qualifications that organizations should be looking for in a data analyst are as follows:- Problem-solving skills: Ability to approach complex problems and provide practical solutions.

- Languages and software: Proficiency in programming languages such as Python, R, SQL, and software like Excel, Tableau, PowerBI, etc.

- Statistical analysis: Understanding of statistics and probability to interpret and analyze data.

- Machine learning: Knowledge of machine learning algorithms can be a plus to anticipate trends and patterns.

- Data visualization: Ability to present data in a visual context to make it easier for others to understand.

- Communication skills: Ability to clearly and effectively communicate findings to both technical and non-technical team members.

As you can see, the technical skills are sandwiched between the soft skills of problem-solving and communication. Before you undertake a project, critical and analytical skills are needed to plan out the exploration and solution roadmap. Once you are finished with the analysis, your communication skills are needed to convey results with the stakeholders.

The key takeaway: Technical skills are definitely important, but don't overlook the soft skills.”

#10 Covid Is The #1 Cop Killer In The United States

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#11 A Detailed Shaded Relief Map Of Manhattan New York Rendered From Lidar Data

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#12 If There Were Only 10 People On Earth, This Is How Wealth Would Be Distributed

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If you are interested in becoming a data analyst and you match all the skills and qualifications, you should also consider what challenges data analysts face when working with unstructured data, and how they can overcome them. Matthew shared his experience. “Unstructured data comes with its own set of challenges. However, given that so much of today's data is unstructured, they are challenges that require attention. Here are some of the biggest such challenges and their considerations.

- Lack of metadata: Unstructured data often lacks metadata, which makes it difficult to understand and use. One way to overcome this is by implementing data cataloging or automatic metadata generation tools.

- Scale and complexity: Unstructured data can be difficult to analyze, simply due to its nature. Leveraging big data technologies like Hadoop, Spark can help in processing and analyzing such data.

- Data quality: As unstructured data comes from various sources, it often presents quality issues. Using machine learning techniques, including natural language processing in the case of the vast amount of unstructured text data that makes up the web, can help clean and standardize unstructured data.

As you can see, the second and third points relate directly to the first question regarding identifying and addressing data quality issues in large datasets.

The key takeaway: Unstructured data requires additional care, which in and of itself can help mitigate data quality issues.”

#13 The Rise And Fall (And Rise) Of "Alexa"

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#14 Finland Joins NATO, More Than Doubling The Alliance's Border With Russia

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#15 The Percent Of Americans Who Believe Abortion Should Be Illegal (1975-2020)

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And lastly, Matthew added: “Hand in hand with the importance of data analysis, the ethics of data collection, usage, and storage should always be kept in mind. The ideals of informed consent, privacy, security, and fairness should not be afterthoughts in data analytics. Moreover, organizations should foster a data-driven culture where decisions are backed by data, and continuous learning is encouraged to keep up with the ever-evolving field of data analytics. The importance of these issues should lead to a need for qualified data analytics experts for a long time to come.

Whatever you do, don't overlook the importance of being able to share your results and tell a good story with data. Stakeholders are looking forward to using your analysis to help solve a problem, so make it easy for them to do so.

And don't forget to look at KDnuggets for much more data analysis.”

#16 Most Spoken Languages In The World

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#17 A Comparison Of Nato And Russia's Military Strength

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#18 I Asked 1000 People To Take Their Pic For Free On The Street

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#19 Global Wealth Inequality In 2021 Visualized By Comparing The Bottom 80% With Increasingly Smaller Groups At The Top Of The Distribution

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#20 Number Of "Birthday" Posts On My Facebook Wall Per Year

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#21 The Cost Of The 2022 FIFA World Cup In Qatar Is Astronomical, Even When Comparing To The Gdp Of The Host Country In The Host Year

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#22 Us States Sorted By Life Expectancy, Colored By Biden's Share Of The 2020 Presidential Election

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#23 Obesity Rate (%) By Country Over Time

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#24 Dating In The Internet Age: 1995 vs. 2017

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#25 Size Niches Of Life On Earth

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#26 Population Density Of Egypt

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#27 The Probability Of Winning A Battle As An Attacker In The Board Game Risk

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#28 Relative Google Search Interest Of Popular TV Series After Last Episode Air Date

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#29 My 2-Month Long Job Search As A Software Engineer With 4 Yeo

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#30 The Cost Of Cable vs. Top Streaming Subscriptions

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#31 Actors/Actresses With The Most Oscar Wins

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#32 Bad Bunny Is The World’s Highest-Grossing Touring Artist This Year

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#33 Much Of Latin America Has Caught Up To The 90%+ Literacy Rate The Us Has Had Since 1900

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#34 Do You Belief In Ghosts?

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#35 Price Of Full Tank Of Gasoline (60 L) As A Percentage Of Average Monthly Net Salary Across The World

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#36 USA: Who Do We Spend Time With Across Our Lifetimes?

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#37 Update - 2.5 Years Of My GF And I Tracking The Sleep Quality Impact Of Various Choices/Behaviours. These Were The 9 Most Significant Effects. Note - White Dash Indicates The % Effect 5 Months Ago

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#38 Household Ownership Of Consumer Goods In India

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#39 How Long Ago Were The Hottest And Coldest Years On Record Around The World

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#40 How To Mathematically Win At Rock, Paper, Scissors

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#41 Estimated Civilian Owned Firearms By Country

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#42 Wes Anderson Films And Their Actors

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#43 Top Human-Caused Threats To Birds In The Us

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#44 Worst Celebrity Private Jet Co2 Emissions Offenders (2022)

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#45 The Slow Decline Of Key Changes In Popular Music

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#46 Rotten Tomatoes Score Of Movies By Marvel Studios

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#47 Updated Size Of Bank Failures Since 2000

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#48 The Popularity Of The Name "Mabel" In The United States Skyrocketed After Gravity Falls Came Out

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#49 The Leading Causes Of Death Among Children In The Us, Ages 5–14

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#50 Japan's Work To Reduce Homelessness

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#51 Obituaries Saying Someone "Died Suddenly" Closely Track Opioid Deaths

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#52 Titanic Survival By Gender And Class. Learning R For The First Time And The Power Of Ggplot

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#53 One-In-Five Teens Are Almost Constantly On Youtube

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#54 The Longest-Running TV Shows Of All-Time

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#55 U.S. Counties With More People Than The State Of Wyoming

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#56 Everyone Thinks They Are Middle Class

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#57 Layoffs In The Tech Industry Over The Last Month For Selected Companies

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#58 The U.S. House Of Representatives Voted Tuesday To Statutorily Codify Gay Marriage Into Law. The Vote Was 267 Yes, 157 No. Here's How Every Member Voted

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#59 Highest Paid Actors For A Single Production

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#60 The Absolute Quality Of Better Call Saul

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#61 Amazon Has 40% Of All E-Commerce Sales In The Us

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#62 My Steam Account For The Last Year Has Had Numerous Hacking Attempts. I Decided To Graph The Origins Of Each Attempt On A Map

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#63 Message Frequency By Daytime For Some Of My Chats

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#64 Map Showing The Latest Situation In Ukraine Today With Territory Gained By Russia

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#65 Netflix's 2021 Fiscal Year, Visualized

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#66 How Americans View Flags In 2022

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#67 Convenience Store Chain With The Most Locations In Each State

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#68 The Most Watched Netflix Shows

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#69 How Long Did You Wait Before

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#70 iPhone Is Only 14% Of Global Smartphone Volume Share (Left) And 42% Of Revenue Share (Mid), But It's 80% Of Profit Share (Right)

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#71 Covid-19 Accounted For More Line-Of-Duty Police Deaths Last Year Than All Other Causes Combined

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#72 Twitter Sentiment On Will Smith Before And After Slap

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#73 Japan's Population Problem, Visualized

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#74 Surge In Egg Prices In The U.S

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#75 A Simple Chart About The Kinds Of Dms This Username (Pm-Ur-Small-Tits) Has Gotten Me Over The Past Three Weeks

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#76 50 Biggest Fast Food Chains By 2021 Number Of Stores In Us

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#77 Herschel Walker Makes Everything Worse

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#78 Most Streamed Artists On Spotify (All Time)

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#79 Costco Hotdog & Soda Combo Price 1985 vs. 2022

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#80 Boys vs. Girl Pixar Movies?

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#81 Fall And Rise Of The New York Times

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#82 India Overtakes China To Become The World's Most Populous Nation

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#83 Us Government Revenue, Spending, And Deficit In 2021

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#84 How Probable Is ......?

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#85 Percentage Of Popualtion Who Believe In God

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#86 Distribution Of Tweets From The Mexican President By Hour Of The Day

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#87 Which Media Organizations Are Trusted More By Democrats And By Republicans

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#88 I Recorded The Race Of All 433 Actors In The 2022 Super Bowl Commercials. Here's How They Compare To The Actual Us Population

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#89 Richest Billionaire In Each State

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#90 My Daughter's Complete First Year Of Sleep

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#91 Costco Hot Dog Combo vs. Inflation

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#92 Comparing The Gdp Of Us States With That Of Countries

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#93 Costco's 2022 Income Statement Visualized With A Sankey Diagram

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#94 The Structural Advantage Held By The Republican Party In The Us Senate

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#95 The Highs And Lows Of Popular Comedy Shows

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#96 No-One Wants Me To Stay Safe Anymore: The Rise And Fall Of The Pandemic Email Signoff

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#97 My Job Search As A Newly Qualified Paramedic In The UK

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