2010

• Graphical World Progress Report – Now Available

  January 14, 2010 to Projects by Nathan Yau

  Want the report? Details at the end on how to get a print. (Update: All proceeds go to UNICEF towards relief effort in Haiti.

  UNdata provides a catalog of 27 United Nations statistical databases and 60 million records about the past, present, and future state of the world. Topics include demographics, life expectancy, labor levels, poverty, and a lot more. What does all that data mean though? World Progress Report, the latest from FlowingPrints, offers a look into the expansive UN collection.

  In whole, the report tells a story of how we live and die, and the stuff in between.
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• Timescapes to Compare Chopin Recordings

  January 13, 2010 to Misc. Visualization by Nathan Yau

  How do you compare music visually? You can break it down into data by quantifying the notes, volume, etc and then visualize it with timescapes (above). The horizontal axis represents musical time, from the beginning to end of a piece. Large blocks show similarities to other pieces and smaller noisy chunks show more "fleeting" similarities.
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• Data Underload #4 – Little Things

  January 12, 2010 to Data Underload by Nathan Yau

  

• The Geography of Netflix Rentals

  January 11, 2010 to Mapping by Nathan Yau

  Some movies are popular everywhere. Others are popular only in certain regions. The New York Times, in a nice team effort, maps rental popularity by zip code for large regions in the US.
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• Need to Escape Jupiter’s Gravitational Pull? Good Luck

  January 8, 2010 to Infographics by Nathan Yau

  

  Randall of xkcd has been having fun with data visualization lately. In his latest data-ish comic, Randall explores gravity wells. The height of each well is sized relative to the amount of energy (on Earth) it would take to escape that planet's gravity. The width of wells are scaled by planet size.

  So you'd need one big arse rocket to escape Jupiter.

  I know it's a comic, hand-drawn, and all stick-figurey and stuff, but Randall actually explains the concepts really well. There's good annotation, clear examples, and he's made an obscure topic easy to understand.

  It's also entertaining in the Bill Nye the Science Guy (i.e. best Saturday morning show ever) sort of way.

  [Thanks, Ricki and Thomas]

• Graphical World Progress Report – A Sneak Peek

  January 7, 2010 to Projects by Nathan Yau

  

  FYI: A new edition on the current state of the world is coming soon from FlowingPrints. Join the mailing list to be first to know when it's available. I'm only going to take orders for one week this time around, so please please make sure you sign up. More info coming next week.
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• 11 Ways to Visualize Changes Over Time – A Guide

  January 7, 2010 to Design by Nathan Yau

  Deal with data? No doubt you've come across the time-based variety. The visualization you use to explore and display that data changes depending on what you're after and data types. Maybe you're looking for increases and decreases, or maybe seasonal patterns.

  This is a guide to help you figure out what type of visualization to use to see that stuff.
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• Even Older Infographics from the 19th Century

  January 6, 2010 to Infographics by Nathan Yau

  Old graphics are awesome. We saw some from the 1930s already. These are even older.

  Other than the maps, I don't exactly know what I'm looking at (knowing French would help too), but who cares? Mmm, hand-drawn goodness.
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• A Visual History of Loudness in Popular Music

  January 5, 2010 to Infographics by Nathan Yau

  All Things Considered discusses why music sounds worse than it did a few decades ago. Through a practice using compressors, the quiet parts of a song are made louder and the louder parts quieter so that the song as a whole sounds louder to your ear. The purpose: to make the song stand out when you hear it on the radio.

  As a result, tracks have gotten louder over the years.
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• Data Underload #3 – The Resolution Cycle

  January 4, 2010 to Data Underload by Nathan Yau

  

• The Universe as We Know It

  January 1, 2010 to Mapping by Nathan Yau

  The Known Universe from the American Museum of Natural History shows a view of the universe, starting from the Himalayas and quickly moving out to the edge where all is black and scary - made possible by the records in the Digital Universe Atlas.
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