Github provides a number of open source data visualization options for data scientists and application developers integrating quality visuals. This is a list and description of the top project offerings available, based on the number of stars.
Open source tools have been used by 73% of data scientists in the past 12 months. While the most recent KDnuggets software poll results do not specifically account for data visualization tools, it is reasonable to believe that similar numbers extend to this dimension of data science, especially given all of the great open source options available today.
There is no question that data visualization is an important piece of the data science puzzle. While a host of commercial options are available to data scientists for preparing visualizations for sharing and explaining data stories, open source tools are catching up to their closed source counterparts.
The following list is composed of the top 10 projects appearing in the Github Data Visualization Project Showcase*. Note from the start that a majority (all?) of these projects are in the JavaScript ecosystem. If you are more interested in Python visualization tools, please see the related posts.
D3 is a JavaScript data visualization library for HTML and SVG. It aims to brings data to life, and emphasizes web standards, combining powerful visualization techniques with a data-driven approach to Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation. D3 is the most popular data visualization project on Github by a wide margin, and is well-represented in the data science community.
Chart.js is an HTML5 library that brings visualization via the
element. Chart.js promotes itself as simple & flexible, is interactive, and supports 6 different chart types. Leaflet is a JavaScript library for the creation of mobile-friendly interactive maps. Its code is incredibly small, and Leaflet is designed with the goals of simplicity, performance, and usability. Doesn't have the functionality you want out of the box? Leaflet is also extensible via a whole host of plugins. ECharts is a browser-based charting and visualization library. Like other libraries on this list, it aims to be easy to use and flexible, as well as intuitive and highly customizable.
