Posts tagged as:

visualization

Holographic GapMinding

November 30, 2010

Hans Rosling -- whose lectures are always fascinating -- is hosting a new documentary for the BBC called "The Joy of Stats." A 5 minute clip has been released on YouTube showing a faux-holographic version of Hans' GapMinder visualization package. The graphic overlay is very well done and lets Hans describe the data in an [...]

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Visualizing politics through time

November 22, 2010

We love choropleths here at TGR, and here's a really great set -- David Sparks has mapped US presidential voting patterns through time to create an excellent visualization of ebbing (and sometimes volatile) political attitudes: Best of all, he did it with R. Please see David's website for more details. Some of his other projects [...]

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Breaking up is hard to do (especially on Christmas)

November 2, 2010

David McCandless's TED talk on data visualization is excellent -- you can catch it here -- and Mathias Mikkelsen has highlighted a single analysis that investigates when people are most likely to break up (according to Facebook) (Update: original here): What makes the chart so appealing is how easy it is to understand, despite the [...]

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The data science Venn diagram

October 14, 2010

Here's an infographic we can get behind -- Drew Conway's data science Venn diagram: Please take the time to read Drew's post on the subject (and his other ones) - they are excellent as always.

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A Data Visualization Manifesto

May 31, 2010

Words of wisdom from Andrew Gelman: What harm is done, if any, by having ambiguous labels, uninformative orderings of variables, inconsistent scaling of axes, and all the rest? From a psychological or graphical perception perspective, maybe these create no problem at all. Perhaps such glitches (from my perspective) are either irrelevant to the general message [...]

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Get LOST!

February 2, 2010

LOST is back tonight! And what better way to prepare than an interactive timeline from the excellent NYT graphics team? A good infographic should communicate otherwise-complex ideas in a simple and intuitive manner... oh, never mind, LOST is back and that's really what matters. Check out the timeline here!

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Chart Wars

January 8, 2010

Alex Lundry, Vice President and Director of Research of the consulting firm Target Point, has published a brief talk called Chart Wars which is simply brilliant, serving as an excellent but brief (5 minutes!) overview of how easy it is to manipulate infographics and what tricks to be wary of. His specific focus is a [...]

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Modern confessionals

December 22, 2009

We all know that you can get some funny/interesting responses by typing the first part of a question into a major search engine's search box and letting it suggest the remainder. The NYT has gone so far as to investigate those suggestions themselves. I particularly enjoyed their description of search engines as "modern confessionals:" This [...]

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Breathtaking

December 22, 2009

We've come a long way since Powers of Ten... (Also see the AMNH videos that this one is responding to for some more amazing visualizations.) (via Infosthetics)

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It's American as sweet potatoes (but not sweet potato pie)

November 27, 2009

The NYT has published an infographic showing the top recipe searches on Allrecipes.com. Searches are broken out by state, allowing some interesting comparisons. (Local dialects and preferences are an interest of mine, and when combined with maps I can't resist... see also various words for soda.) Here's the chart for "apple pie", the 5th most [...]

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If you're watching this, it's not the future yet

November 12, 2009

It's been a while since I posted a video for the futurist set, so here we go: (This one is a commercial production for Freeband, heavy on the infographics and benefits of smart networking with a pinch of cheesiness. Sign me up.) (via Datavisualization.ch)

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Radial clustering

September 14, 2009

Finally, a radial visualization which serves a purpose rather than just looking cool. Getting Genetics Done has a tutorial on using clustering functions in R. In it, they show how this this analysis: is much better represented like this: There's nothing wrong with making a chart which looks good - in fact it's encouraged - so long as [...]

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Processing

August 28, 2009

John Maeda has written an article for the MIT Technology Review about Processing, the open source visualization language. It's a very interesting look into the story behind the code. Maeda is the president of the Rhode Island School of Design and was once the director of MIT's Media Lab, where Processing was born. Lately, I've [...]

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Manhattan in flux

August 13, 2009

A very nice graphic is making the rounds (though I believe it originated in a 2007 issue of Time Magazine) which shows Manhattan's population density by day and by night. The difference is striking: Happily, the density bars mimic the placement of Manhattan's skyscrapers - this follows because obviously the tallest buildings support the highest [...]

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Cash for who?

August 11, 2009

A visualization from GOOD of the top 10 trade-ins and new vehicles under the "Cash for Clunkers" program reveals an interesting fact: The top 10 trade-ins include 5 Fords, 2 Chevys, 2 Jeeps and a Dodge. You might recognize those names - they used to be powerhouse American brands. Meanwhile, the top 10 new cars [...]

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Untangling charts

August 6, 2009

House Minority Leader Boehner recently released this "infographic" (I use the term loosely) in order to demonstrate his frustration with the House Democrats's heath proposal: The chart really is an absolute nightmare: the colors, layout, and hidden connections contribute to an absolutely impossible-to-read image, which is exactly what Rep Boehner wants. Recently, Robert Palmer, a [...]

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Mapping Seinfeld

August 6, 2009

Posted as a public service following this announcement (click to zoom): via Daily Fill.

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Steve Duenes @ SIGGRAPH'09

August 5, 2009

Steve Duenes, Graphic Director at the NYT, gave the keynote address at SIGGRAPH today. He and his team are at the forefront of modern data visualization. Their techniques are innovative, meticulous, and most importantly crystal clear - it's no surprise that every graphic they publish wins accolades across the web. So far the only description [...]

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The 100 users of Twitter

July 31, 2009

An interesting visualization of Twitter as 100 people is a good take on a popular infographic meme, but reveals a few inconvenient truths about these sorts of images. Firstly, although I am (not so) secretly pleased to see this illustration of Twitter's non-inclusive communicative nature let's not forget that Twitter, like so many other social [...]

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Illustrating the importance of data visualization

June 12, 2009

Andrew Gelman discusses research on attitudes toward gay marriage, by state, and notes this graph in particular, which shows the change in opinion over the last 15 years: Critically, he points out that the states which experienced the greatest change in attitude were the ones that already were most receptive. A naive analysis of the [...]

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Critiquing the Crimson

June 9, 2009

The Harvard Crimson has published its annual senior survey, which is making headlines in part because very few seniors are going into finance. Selected results were presented in an interesting visualization (the image below links to a full size pdf): Now that my brother has graduated after successfully steering the Crimson's business operations to one [...]

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Breaking down labor mobility

June 7, 2009

Great graphic from the NYT (click to zoom): (via LL)

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Visualizing randomness

May 19, 2009

Daniel Becker's diploma dissertation was on the visualization of randomness - finding concrete ways to map the highly abstract idea of random behaviors and patterns. The resulting portfolio is fascinating, even for someone without a statistical background, in particular for the way in which it lends a semblance of order to these inherently chaotic processes. [...]

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Charting value (maybe)

May 19, 2009

Silicon Valley Insider presented this as its Chart of the Day today, saying it indicates the success of Microsoft's "Laptop Hunter" ads: First of all, it takes some digging to learn what this scale even means, which brings us to a violation of charting rule #1: do not use a misleading axis! The true scale [...]

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Unemployment map

April 20, 2009

Slate has an interactive map which illustrates job losses by county throughout the US over the last two years. It's very sobering to watch the red circles (representing losses) explode in late 2008.

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I'll have a carbonated beverage, please

March 27, 2009

Anyone who has visited the South has probably heard a conversation like this: Waitress: What would you like to drink? Southerner: I'll have a coke. Waitress: What kind of coke? Southerner: I'll have a Coke. And after this bizarre back and forth, the waitress goes off and comes back with (surprise!) a Coke.  Like this: But [...]

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Superbowl Tweeting

March 27, 2009

I know I'm really late on this one, but the NYTimes put together an excellent timelapse visualization of Twitter comments across the US during the Superbowl.  It's especially cool to see player names jump out as plays take place, or ad campaigns taking hold as commercials air.  Check it out here.

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It's never too late for Stats 101

March 26, 2009

Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian, on jobs in the upcoming decade (emphasis mine): I keep saying the sexy job in the next ten years will be statisticians. People think I’m joking, but who would’ve guessed that computer engineers would’ve been the sexy job of the 1990s? The ability to take data—to be able to understand [...]

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57% of the deficit, visualized

March 14, 2009

Believe it or not, this next little pile is $1 million dollars (100 packets of $10,000). You could stuff that into a grocery bag and walk around with it. ...continued at What does one TRILLION dollars look like?

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The Crisis of Credit Visualized

March 2, 2009

This visualization of the credit crisis is fantastic:

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