As analysts, we spend a lot of our time digging into the numbers to analyze, visualize, and communicate data. In order to do these things, we rely on particular tools to get the job done. I like this post from last summer where folks from the Elevate team - Will Chase, Duncan Geere, Gabrielle Merite and Alli Torban - talk about different software they use across the data viz process. For our office, we typically work with Excel/Google Sheets, Tableau, R/RStudio, PowerPoint, and Adobe Illustrator. Not surprisingly, there is definitely some overlap with these tools and what they are also using, but they also had a few others in there that I thought were pretty neat.

• Figma - wireframing and design software
• RawGraphs - open source, web-based data viz software
• DataWrapper - easy to use, high quality chatting software
• Mapshaper - “a super-fast, browser-based geodata editor”

I encourage you to read their post and to check out these different tools they discuss. We often use tools that we have familiarity with, but maybe some of these others offer some advantages your current software doesn’t have. Additionally, considering some new options helps us reflect on whether we’re using the right tool for the job.

Happy plotting!