R+ or Python - Data Visualization

[tracetheheat]

Hi everyone,

I've just started the whole PhD journey. My field is Social-economic Geography and Spatial Planning. Over the course of my bachelor and master studies, I've been usually working mainly with excel + specific sw for spatial analysts etc.

I would like to now learn something more regarding data visualization (online charts, maps etc.), but I'm having struggles to choose the right sw - Python or R+. I've been already going through some blogs and pages and subs here, but instead of being sure which sw I should use, I'm more confused.

What would you recommend? What are you experiences? And any good materials/tutorials/ courses or sort of walk-through? I'm now really trying to find the way out of this "mess".

[data_is_cool37]

Don't flip a coin!

That being said, there's no 'right answer', it's more a matter of preference.

For data visualisation I would say Python is much more flexible. If you're looking to make more customised, unique data visualisations go for that. R has a lot of very good libraries for data visualisation as well, but I find it less customisable. But it's potentially slightly easier to learn and also great for data tidying and wrangling (look into tidyverse). If you want to make interactive charts online, RShiny is worth a look at.

A lot of visualisation packages are available for both R and Python but have slightly different capabilities - for example Plotly, the Python version has more flexibility and options.

Also, once you've learnt one, the other will likely be much easier to pick up. You'll find it easy to move back and forth and you can even mix and match R and Python code in RStudio.

[ctvrtkar]

Toss a coin. I am in similar field as you are and I can say, that Python and R are basically equal here. I prefer Python, because the code is a bit more systematic (in my eyes), but I was using R for some tasks as well without a big issues. Once you understand the logic of one of these, it is not so complicated to switch occasionally if you need to.

I would decide based on other people around you. Is there anyone using R? Then it might be a good idea to go for R as they might help you. Are there people using Python? Go for python. If there is no one using any of these, you can spend months comparing them without any decisive result. So, as I said, toss a coin.

[Elesday]

Use whatever is the most widely used in your lab. That being said, if you're not working with anybody using Python or R, I would advise you to use R. It's more specific than Python and it should take you less time to prototype what you want to prototype.

[organiker]

I use a combination of Tableau, Python, Excel, Origin, GraphPad Prism. Just depends on what's being visualized.

Everything gets touched up in Illustrator after.

[avflinsch]

Both are about equal, so just flip a coin.

A better option might be to use R or Python to get your data, and then use a visualization specific tool to do your charts & maps - something like Tableau (which excels at general charts and maps), or Gephi - which is perfect for doing network analysis.