Charts, Dashboards, Maps, and More: Seeing Data in Light | by editors of TDS | January, 2025

Feeling inspired to write your first TDS post? We are always open to contributions from new writers.

Buzzwords and trends come and go, but the core task of telling compelling stories with data remains one of the main pillars in the daily workflow of data scientists. For professionals looking to up their visual game, this week we're highlighting some of our best recent articles on creating powerful, effective, and smooth presentations.

Our selection touches on the topic from many angles, so whether you're interested in developing charts, geospatial tools, or interactive dashboards, we're sure you'll find something here to inspire you and help you expand your current skill set. Enjoy playing!

• A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Bubble Charts in Plotly
  Are you ready to move from bar charts to more advanced and custom formats? Don't miss it Amanda Iglesias MorenoA tutorial based on Plotly, which presents a complete workflow for creating an explosion chart, a special visualization “designed to examine changes in measurements over time” and allows us to “quickly identify trends and find features up or down the scale.”
• Easy Map Boundary Domain with GeoPandas
  Working with geospatial data can be very rewarding—not to mention necessary in many industries—but it can be tricky and sometimes overwhelming. Lee VaughanThe latest guide to Python brings clarity and functionality to the most common use case: extracting, estimating, and plotting country boundaries.