Upload your dataset and the 'manifest.json' file into S3

  • S3 is used in this project to store my dataset and manifest.json file.
  • I edited the manifest.json file by updating the S3 URL of my dataset.
  • It's important to update this file so that the manifest.json file won't be pointing to the wrong address.

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Updated manifest.json file.

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Here is my bucket with CSV and manifest files.

Create your Amazon QuickSight account

  • QuickSight account is free to create and the free trial lasts for 30 days. It took about 2 minutes to create.
  • I also had to enable QuickSight's access to S3 because my dataset is stored in a S3 bucket and specific access is required to access my dataset.

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I created a QuickSight account

Why was the manifest file important

  • The manifest.json file was important in this step because it acts as a map to guide QuickSight on where the file is located and how it should classify the data

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Let's make visualizations

To create visualization on QuickSight you will have to drag fields you want to visualize into the QuickSight AutoGraph field.
The graph shown here is a breakdown of movies vs tv shows released each year. I created this graph putting the release year on the Y axis and making the type movie/tv show the grouping variable.

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My first visualization

Using filters

Filter are useful for specifying data that you want to analyze. Here I added a filter by excluding movies and tv shows released before 2015.
This helped me create a visualization on movies released from 2015 onwards.

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Visualization after filtering

Set up your dashboard

As a finishing touch, I edited titles of my graph so that the charts are readable.
Did you know you could export your dashboard as a PDF file? I did this by publishing the dashboard and clicking the export function.

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My Key Learnings

  1. QuickSight is a quick data visualization service.
  2. QuickSight makes data visualization easy especially using a drag and drop feature.

Final Thoughts

  • Always clean up your project to keep it under free tier account :)
  • Now that I know how to use QuickSight, in the future i'd use it to practice data visualization using other types of data.
  • An area of data visualization i'd like to explore is making animated presentation with the data.