You can get pretty far with data graphics with just limited statistical knowledge, but if you want to take your skills, resume, and portfolio to the next level, you should learn standard data practices. Of all places, UK Parliament has some short and free guides to help you with basic statistical concepts. They provide 13 notes, each only two or three pages long that can help you with stuff like how to adjust for inflation, confidence intervals and statistical significance, or basic graph suggestions [pdf]. I like.

[via | Thanks, @joemako]

Flowchart Friday, anyone? This one describes the process to solve all of your problems. Unfortunately, sometimes in life, you just end up going around in circles. That's what Maury Povich taught me.

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A couple of months back, WNYC's The Brian Lehrer Show asked listeners who have moved to or away from New York some questions. They asked current zipcode, previous zipcode, year of move, and some other questions. BLS then posted the data and let information and data folk have a go at it. Here are the results.
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I trust we've all seen the OldSpice YouTube campaign by now? This graphic from Know Your Meme categorizes videos by who they were directed to and how many views they received. For example, a video to Joe Blow would be in the low-profile category, while responses to Alyssa Milano go to the high-profile category.
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The tennis US Open is in full swing, and since you're at work, you probably need a way to keep up with all of the matches. In a collaboration between the US Open and IBM, this real-time display shows you what's going on during any given match.
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A big thank you to FlowingData sponsors for their support. They help me keep the lights on. Check 'em out. They help you understand your data.

Splunk - Leading software used to monitor, report and analyze live streaming IT data as well as terabytes of historical data – located on-premise or in the cloud. More than 1,850 organizations in 70 countries use Splunk to gain valuable insights from their IT data.

Tableau Software - Combines data exploration and visual analytics in an easy-to-use data analysis tool you can quickly master. It makes data analysis easy and fun. Customers are working 5 to 20 times faster using Tableau.

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Last month we saw sorting algorithms visualized in rainbow technicolor. Now, by Rudy Andrut, here they are auralized.

This particular audibilization is just one of many ways to generate sound from running sorting algorithms. Here on every comparison of two numbers (elements) I play (mixing) sin waves with frequencies modulated by values of these numbers. There are quite a few parameters that may drastically change resulting sound - I just chose parameteres that imo felt best.

It sounds like someone is playing on old Atari game. Warning: may cause seizures. Watch it in action in the video below.
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It's been a hectic month. With one month left until my thesis defense, there's no letting up, and it's time to turn on the after burners. It's definitely been interesting though, culling everything I've learned these past five years.

As it turns out, writing for FlowingData is actually a nice break from thesis-writing every now and then, so I've managed to keep things up and running around here. Thanks to everyone who has sent suggestions. You've been a big help. And of course, thanks to all who continue to share FlowingData. Much appreciated.

In case you missed them, or you're new, here are the top posts from this past month.
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FlowingData reader Chris asks:

I was wondering, have you ever considered doing a Chernoff faces tutorial for R? I think Chernoff faces are pretty interesting and I haven't seen much about them on the web.

This wasn't the first time someone's asked how to make Chernoff faces, so I did a quick search. Guess what. There's an R package for that. This tutorial describes how to apply Chernoff faces to your own data.
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Auger Loizeau, in collaboration with Reyer Zwiggelaar and Bashar Al-Rjoub, describe their smart-home project Happylife. It monitors facial expressions and movements to estimate a family's mood, displayed via four glowing orbs on the wall, one for each member.
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