IBM Visual Communications Lab has an opening

May 4, 2010 to Miscellaneous • Share on Twitter • Add Comment

There are a lot of job opportunities out there for visualization people. This is one of the more awesome ones:

We are looking for a PhD-level researcher who is excited by data, visualization, and communication. A job candidate should have a history of designing and building innovative visualizations. An emphasis on large-scale user participation (e.g. collaboration, crowdsourcing, social communication) and on evaluation of hypotheses about user behavior is a plus. A successful candidate will have published in one or more areas of information visualization, computer-supported cooperative work, and human-computer interaction.

No more Martin and Fernanda, but still good I am sure.

[via @infosthetics]

How men and women label colors

May 4, 2010 to Infographics, Statistics • Share on Twitter • Comments (8)

Along the same lines of Dolores Labs' color experiment, Randall Munroe of xkcd reveals the results of his color survey. He took a slightly different approach though. Here are some of the basic findings:

If you ask people to name colors long enough, they go totally crazy.

“Puke” and “vomit” are totally real colors.

Colorblind people are more likely than non-colorblind people to type “fuck this” (or some variant) and quit in frustration.

Indigo was totally just added to the rainbow so it would have 7 colors and make that “ROY G. BIV” acronym work, just like you always suspected. It should really be ROY GBP, with maybe a C or T thrown in there between G and B depending on how the spectrum was converted to RGB.

A couple dozen people embedded SQL ‘drop table’ statements in the color names. Nice try, kids.

Nobody can spell “fuchsia”.

Major wood pallet fires?

May 4, 2010 to Design, Mapping • Share on Twitter • Comments (5)

I put this up only because I had no idea wood pallet risks were such a hot topic. No pun intended.

Of course, if you compare number of pallet fires to number of residential fires, the above almost seems like nothing. There were 20 major pallet fires between 2008 and 2010. There were 403,000 residential structure fires, causing an estimated $8.6 billion in damage - in 2008 alone.

While I'm sure the pallet fires caused plenty of problems, it's always good to put things in perspective.

Update: As Douglas points out, the site reeks of plastic pallet propaganda. Another case of forcing an issue by exaggerating the numbers. Tsk.

[Thanks, John]

Planets make sweet music together

May 4, 2010 to Data Art • Share on Twitter • Comments (9)

SolarBeat is an audiolization by Whitevinyl that makes music with the planets. Each planet is assigned a note. As the planets orbit, a note is played each time a year passes on that planet. Result: the planets make sweet, sweet music together.

[via Information is Beautiful | Thanks, John]

The (nerdy) data-driven life

May 3, 2010 to Self-surveillance • Share on Twitter • Comments (9)

Gary Wolf, of Wired and The Quantified Self, describes personal data collection and analysis in NYT magazine. Collect data about yourself, and you just might learn something.

Humans make errors. We make errors of fact and errors of judgment. We have blind spots in our field of vision and gaps in our stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t even answer the simplest questions. Where was I last week at this time? How long have I had this pain in my knee? How much money do I typically spend in a day? These weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We make decisions with partial information. We are forced to steer by guesswork. We go with our gut.

That is, some of us do. Others use data.

It all sounds great at first. But the story ends, as these types of stories almost always do, with a guy in a Google shirt walking around with one too many gadgets:

Bo Adler, a young computer scientist at Fujitsu Laboratories of America, is one of the most committed self-trackers I’ve ever met: during his most active phase he wore a blood-pressure cuff, pulse oximeter and accelerometer all day long, along with a computer on a harness to collect the data. Adler has sleep apnea, and he is trying to figure it out. When he became too self-conscious going to the gym in his gear, he wore a Google T-shirt to throw people off. Maybe he was a freak, but at least people could mistake him for a millionaire freak.

We data folk stick to our guns though:

“My girlfriend thinks I’m the weird person when I wear all these devices,” Bo Adler says. “She sees me as an oddity, but I say no, soon everybody is going to be doing this, and you won’t even notice.”

So proud. You tell 'em, Bo Adler. You tell 'em.

Design for America deadline approaching

May 3, 2010 to News • Share on Twitter • Add Comment

Just a quick note. Sunlight Labs' Design for America contest is coming up soon on May 15. There's $40k in prize money up for grabs, so get your entries in soon. All forms of media are accepted - including sculptures.
Continue Reading

Data Underload: One Thousand Posts

May 3, 2010 to Data Underload • Share on Twitter • Comments (16)

On June 25, 2007 I published the first FlowingData post. Today, here is the one thousandth. I asked what I should do for this special occasion and pretty much everyone said I should visualize the posts somehow, so here we go.

With the exception of the holiday gaps and the early months, I've managed to stay surprisingly consistent, yeah?

Thanks for reading, everyone. Gold star for anyone who remembers what FlowingData's theme color was in 2007.

Weekend Fodder – Death and Taxes

May 1, 2010 to Quicklinks • Share on Twitter • Add Comment

Death and Taxes: 2011 poster - Jess' annual look at government spending has hit the shelves. Use the code 'flowingdata' at checkout for buy one, get one free.

2 Girls, 1 Cup reactions analysis - Paul Shen tracks the sound and movement of people's reaction to the horrible video. The collage at the end is the best part. [via]

Fernanda Viégas is an influential woman - As if you needed another reason to contract Flowing Media for your visualization needs. [via]

China's investments in foreign companies - An animated map of investments from 2005 to 2009. Kind of rough around the edges, but Interesting.

Find out whose Twitter fans are dumber

May 1, 2010 to Miscellaneous • Share on Twitter • Comments (10)

Stupid Fight compares fans on Twitter using "stupid indicators" like "OMG" and number of exclamation points. Congratulations, @flowingdata fans. You are smarter than @justinbieber fans. However, I regret to inform you that you are in the yellow. OMG.

[via Waxy]