# Explore your data using visualization techniques


**Note**  
You can only use SageMaker Canvas visualizations for models built on tabular datasets. Multi-category text prediction models are also excluded.

With Amazon SageMaker Canvas, you can explore and visualize your data to gain advanced insights into your data before building your ML models. You can visualize using scatter plots, bar charts, and box plots, which can help you understand your data and discover the relationships between features that could affect the model accuracy.

In the **Build** tab of the SageMaker Canvas application, choose **Data visualizer** to begin creating your visualizations.

You can change the visualization sample size to adjust the size of the random sample taken from your dataset. A sample size that is too large might affect the performance of your data visualizations, so we recommend that you choose an appropriate sample size. To change the sample size, use the following procedure.

1. Choose **Visualization sample**.

1. Use the slider to select your desired sample size.

1. Choose **Update** to confirm the change to your sample size.

**Note**  
Certain visualization techniques require columns of a specific data type. For example, you can only use numeric columns for the x and y-axes of scatter plots.

## Scatter plot


To create a scatter plot with your dataset, choose **Scatter plot** in the **Visualization** panel. Choose the features you want to plot on the x and y-axes from the **Columns** section. You can drag and drop the columns onto the axes or, once an axis has been dropped, you can choose a column from the list of supported columns.

You can use **Color by** to color the data points on the plot with a third feature. You can also use **Group by** to group the data into separate plots based on a fourth feature.

The following image shows a scatter plot that uses **Color by** and **Group by**. In this example, each data point is colored by the `MaritalStatus` feature, and grouping by the `Department` feature results in a scatter plot for the data points of each department.

![\[Screenshot of a scatter plot in the Data visualizer view of the Canvas application.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/latest/dg/images/studio/canvas/canvas-eda-scatter-plot.png)


## Bar chart


To create a bar chart with your dataset, choose **Bar chart** in the **Visualization** panel. Choose the features you want to plot on the x and y-axes from the **Columns** section. You can drag and drop the columns onto the axes or, once an axis has been dropped, you can choose a column from the list of supported columns.

You can use **Group by** to group the bar chart by a third feature. You can use **Stack by** to vertically shade each bar based on the unique values of a fourth feature.

The following image shows a bar chart that uses **Group by** and **Stack by**. In this example, the bar chart is grouped by the `MaritalStatus` feature and stacked by the `JobLevel` feature. For each `JobRole` on the x axis, there is a separate bar for the unique categories in the `MaritalStatus` feature, and every bar is vertically stacked by the `JobLevel` feature.

![\[Screenshot of a bar chart in the Data visualizer view of the Canvas application.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/latest/dg/images/studio/canvas/canvas-eda-bar-chart.png)


## Box plot


To create a box plot with your dataset, choose **Box plot** in the **Visualization** panel. Choose the features you want to plot on the x and y-axes from the **Columns** section. You can drag and drop the columns onto the axes or, once an axis has been dropped, you can choose a column from the list of supported columns.

You can use **Group by** to group the box plots by a third feature.

The following image shows a box plot that uses **Group by**. In this example, the x and y-axes show `JobLevel` and `JobSatisfaction`, respectively, and the colored box plots are grouped by the `Department` feature.

![\[Screenshot of a box plot in the Data visualizer view of the Canvas application.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/sagemaker/latest/dg/images/studio/canvas/canvas-eda-box-plot.png)