On Big Data Visualization

From InsideBigData:
In this special guest feature, Jans Aasman Ph.D., psychologist and expert in cognitive science as well as CEO of Franz Inc., discusses the use of semantic visual discovery to make big data meaningful. Dr. Aasman was an early innovator in Artificial Intelligence and leading supplier of Semantic Graph Database technology. .... 

Data visualization, according to Nathan Yau, a UCLA statistician, is “a representation of data that helps you see what you otherwise would have been blind to if you looked only at the naked source.”
Businesses are increasingly turning to visualization-based data discovery tools, with Gartner estimating a 30 percent compound annual growth rate through 2015. As organizations around the world collect more data than ever, and as Big Data gains popularity as a means of expanding entrepreneurial horizons, visuals can help us understand connections within the data with greater clarity. .... " 

And I add, while data viz is often presented as 'just' a better descriptive mechanism,  it is often a key part of discovery, and should always be used prior to analytics and machine learning exercises.  Start with the basics.