Data Visualizations are Data Structures

Information is independent of its representation, and any particular data representation makes some things easy and other things hard. The art of data structures — and data visualizations — is choosing the right structure for your circumstances, and tuning it well.

Concepts from the analysis and engineering of data structures, like big O notation and locality in space and time, are also useful in understanding and improving visualizations and visualization systems. The “computer” that a data visualization runs on is the human mind, which has its own performance properties based on the biology of the human perceptual system and the desired information access patterns.

There’s more to say on this analogy, but it will have to wait for a future post.