by Matt Oxley
A linguistic introduction to d3.js
How to go from a tentative to a confident user
d3.js is a fantastic library — but I can honestly tell you that for a long time I used it without fully understanding it. Lacking any solid mental model of what I was working with, I would admittedly tend to copy/paste pieces of code from various snippets over at bl.ocks.org, cross my fingers and hope for the best.