I don't feel that a grid of cells is the best visual representation for data. However, it is a natural representation for tabular data. Tables are horrible for

I don't feel that a grid of cells is the best visual representation for data. However, it is a natural representation for tabular data. Tables are horrible for "visualizing". We didn't evolve looking at tables with hundreds of columns and millions of rows. Once you learn some pivoting tools and charting, you can visualize things that you would never be able to find in a table of data. (Or if you did it would take a lot longer.) (Sample size 1, but I teach Python, Pandas, and visualization (Jupyter w/ matplotlib/seaborn/bokeh). I've had clients tell me that one chart they came up with during a class on visualization more than paid for the training. They would have never seen that in the table of data. I've also found bugs in code by visualizing failure patterns.)