When creating visualizations for the Web, chances are that the format your data comes in will not be the final format you use with D3. We will take a look at making our datasets useful with both D3 and regular JavaScript.

We start with a quick dip into functional programming to bring everyone up to speed. A lot of this will be self-evident if you use Haskell, Scala, or Lisp, or write JavaScript in a functional style. Functional programming is a hot topic in JavaScript development right now, for good reason -- it makes your code easier to read, encourages good practices, such as not mutating variables, and leverages one of JavaScript's best features as a language -- the use of first-class functions. We'll take a look at what that means in a short while.

We will continue with loading external data in a variety of different ways, take a closer look at...