Chapter 4. Data Exploration

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

• Listing unique values in a column
• Exploring numeric value distribution in a column
• Exploring spatiotemporal data using Time Manager
• Creating animations using Time Manager
• Designing time-dependent styles
• Loading BaseMaps with the QuickMapServices plugin
• Loading BaseMaps with the OpenLayers plugin
• Viewing geotagged photos

Introduction

This chapter focuses on recipes that will help you visually inspect and better comprehend your data. The recipes in this chapter include methods of summarizing, inspecting, filtering, and styling data, based on spatial and temporal attributes so that you can get a better feeling for your data before you perform analysis. The primary goal is to create some visuals or summaries of data that allow you, the human, to utilize your brain's ability to identify patterns of interest. The better you understand your data, the easier it is to pick appropriate analysis methods later.

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