POLL: What Data-related Area Are You Most Interested In?

It’s time for a FlowingData poll. I want to know what data-ish things you’re interested in. Design? Statistics? Analytics? Select your answer in the poll below. If you select other, let us know what that other thing is in the comments.

{democracy:8}

25 Comments

  • first!
    definitely cartography. maps are fate.

  • I voted “Other.” My choice would have been demography/epidemiology

  • Matt Alcock May 7, 2009 at 6:58 am

    There aren’t enough web blogs out there explaining how statitics can be applied to data to find patterns and anomalies. Maybe I should start one? :-)

    Design is important but Nathan I think you have this covered!

    I would compare your poll results versus you tag count (categorised to fit the poll groups maybe) and see what area needs a pick me up.

  • Why limit us to one choice? Several areas interest me, and my work lies on the cross-section of several of the given categories…

  • I think business is a bit broad. I would specfically be interested from a supply chain and ERP perspcetive. Customer Service could be very interesting as well.

  • Other: Art + Numbers

    BTW I expect to see a beautiful presentation of the results :)

  • Education and psychometrics – application of student performance data to improved student learning. Ways to get teachers involved in collecting, organizing, and visualizing data to inform their instruction.

    (But I also like Information Science and Web Analytics. And Math. And programming.)

  • @Matt – all part of the plan

    @wwwald – i like to put people to a decision :)

  • I’m going with Brad on this one…demography and epidemiology.

  • I think we need to be able to select multiple options (perhaps ranked).

    Then you can ask a reader to visualize the results.

  • I like that you forced us in to one answer; it forces us to think about which one is most important. While I absolutely love design, my first priority is the business and making sure that whatever I create is business functional first.

    So clever you are!

  • @Nathan

    But if I apply statistics to business data, what do I choose?

    Restricting to a single choice is fine, except when some of the choices are orthogonal to one another.

  • i voted for design. speaking of, the design of this bar graph seems flawed – each bar looks like it represents a percentage of 100% because it’s inside an outlined box.

  • @BCC – I’d say if you are applying statistics to business data…then business is the primary choice. It doesn’t sound like you are doing statistics for the sake of doing statistics.

    IMHO, of course. o_O

  • I’m surprised that this poll is reporting the absolute number of votes for each category rather than the percentage share.If the bar length was percentage and the reported units were absolute then at least you would have dual reporting types. Currently it’s just more time consuming to interpret.

  • Voted statistics. Preferably with a demographic slant.

  • Higher Education… funding and financing and endowments and capital campaigns + regional growth + global ebb/flow of international students + impact diagrams of Bologna Process + changes in fields of study + etc. etc.

  • It’s hard to decide on one – I’ll have to go with design but leaving cartography behind was a hard decision.

  • Jeroenemans May 8, 2009 at 5:23 am

    Shouldn’t this poll have been expressed as a score for every option on a likert scale ? ;)

  • Higher Education, globalisation, fields of study, student demographics, student location, nationality, internationalisation, disciplines, courses, units, part-time, full-time, graduate, undergraduate, postgraduate, research, diploma etc etc
    Just waiting (hoping) some of this encourages you to apply your creative mind to this field, there are a lot of interested people out here Nathan…

  • I would like to see more data about the economy, both national and international views of relevant data.

  • JamesScottSomers May 9, 2009 at 2:03 pm

    Definately more technical/ science oriented projects. Not that the more artistic expression stuff is not interesting.

    I voted mathematics.

  • Answered “other”. Mainly interested in….
    – self/personal data
    – government/politics
    – privacy/legal
    – data vizualization
    I’m excited by the potential for data to empower individuals through new (objective) insights.

    Really enjoy the blog – keep up the good work!

  • OTHER: Visual Problem Solving / Storytelling

    Ofcourse, that pretty much includes all the other areas mentioned.

  • Statistics… and I find it deliciously ironic that it’s a statistic showing that statistics is the most important thing for most of the people who bothered to vote (which could have been confounded – possibly people who are fascinated by statistics are more likely to take a survey, ya think?).

    Demography, specifically, for me too.