I liked it! There were many super interesting thoughts in there about working with data in general. I think I would recommend it to any data scientiest friend who would be open enough to read it.
That said, it is not a super easy read…which is partly due to the topic, but also partly due to the, well, a bit academic writing style and the long chapters. I liked all the anecdotes, examples, quotes and images inbetween – they made it an easier read.
The thing that resonated the most with me was the idea of “being a stranger in a data set” (chapter 5, p133). I’ve been such a stranger often enough – and I’m always positively surprised how better the visualization becomes and how easier the process is when I’m not a stranger. When I understand the data, because it’s about me. That was beautifully explained in the book.
As somebody who works at a simple charting tool (Datawrapper), I won’t be able to use much of the nice Data Visceralization ideas from chapter 3. But I can definitely use the ideas from chapter 6, e.g. the “communicate context” ideas. I think Lauren and Catherine did a great job at explaining the power of a headline (p164) and how it can frame a visualization. So for the future, I’ll ask myself more: “With which headline can I do justice to the people in the data and frame it well?”