By Krishna Ramaswamy, Ph.D

Big data is a big topic. It is one of the most popular buzzwords in the tech world today. From finance and banking, genomics and healthcare, to marketing and communications, nearly all industries want to utilise data to drive business decisions. Advances in communications, social networking, and information technology have fueled a tsunami of Big Data paving the way for development of interactive data visualisation tools.

Traditionally, data visualisation tools were static, non-interactive graphs and tables that were a staple in board rooms. They provided a visual representation of the data, but required more time to analyze and understand the data. Further, the traditional data visualisation tools could be error prone and often required in-depth knowledge of the application in use. The increased interest and advancements we are experiencing with interactive data visualization can be attributed to:

• Advances in computational power, data analysis and graphics …