2011 June

• Long-exposure air traffic

  June 16, 2011 to Misc. Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Terrance Chang shows us flight patterns at San Francisco International Airport using long-exposure photography so that over time, you can see where airplanes take off from and land.

  It's true. Anything that moves at night and emits light is bound to be interesting via long-duration shutter speed (e.g. a Roomba, fireflies, and WiFi networks).

  Catch the full set of photos here, which are also available as prints.

  Gold star if you can think of other interesting paths or phenomena that'd look amazing via long-exposure.

  [Airport via @dpatil]

• Flowchart to decide if you should share that pic of your privates

  June 15, 2011 to Miscellaneous  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  This seems obvious, but apparently there are people who are unsure of what to do with Twitter and social norms. Now you know. Thanks, Good Magazine for your clear guide.

  [GOOD | Thanks, @unchillbill]

• Computer assisted design and the 9/11 Memorial

  June 15, 2011 to Network Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Digital artist Jer Thorp discusses the algorithm and tool used to arrange 9/11 victims' names based on who they were with when they died. The process started with the collection of data.
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• Open thread: Is the Food Plate better than the Pyramid?

  June 14, 2011 to Discussion  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  In an effort to decrease obesity and improve general health, the US government announced their newest guide to food proportions: the food plate. This of course is a departure from the food pyramid that has been around in one form or another since the 1990s. Instead of slivers or sections on a pyramid, we now have a pie chart type of thing. Well, more like a Simon.

  So here's the question: Does the plate work better than the pyramid?
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• RottenTomatoes trends with Career-o-matic

  June 14, 2011 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Slate puts together a rough analysis of RottenTomatoes actor and director career ratings. They plot average ratings for films in general, actors, and directors, which aren't all that useful, but the Career-o-matic is fun to play with. Punch in a name and see the ratings over time.

  [U]se Slate's Hollywood Career-o-Matic tool below to map the career of any major actor or director from the last 26 years. You can also type in more than one name to plot careers side by side. For example, Paul Thomas Anderson vs. Wes Anderson vs. Pamela Anderson. Mouse over the data points to see which movies they represent.

  Poor M. Night Shyamalan is on the decline.

  [Hollywood Career-O-Matic | Thanks, Laura]
• 

  Largest data breaches of all time

  As I'm sure you know, Sony has been having all sorts of data breach problems lately — namely a million...

• Analysis of passwords in Sony security breach

  June 13, 2011 to Statistics  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  A little over a week ago, Sony was hit yet again with another security breach — this time over one million passwords, that were stored in plain text, were released into the wild. Software architect Troy Hunt took a closer look at the dataset and found just how predictable people's passwords are.
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• Yacht design inspired by Voronoi diagram

  June 10, 2011 to Data Art  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Industrial architect Hyun-Seok Kim, known for eccentric yacht designs, uses Voronoi diagrams as his latest inspiration:

  Still at the design stage, the 125-meter vessel is adorned with a complex lattice exterior that its designer, South Korean industrial architect Hyun-Seok Kim, says is based on an algorithmic diagram by Georgy Voronoy, a math professor who lived under the Russian empire during the late 1800s.

  I can't wait for the subsequent bar, pie, and treemap yachts. They will be glorious.

  [CNN via @shiffman]

• What you need to get together

  June 10, 2011 to Miscellaneous  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  A good one from someone named Cody. I couldn't figure out where this is actually from though.

• Keyboard with keys raised by frequency of use

  June 9, 2011 to Data Art  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Mike Knuepfel, a student in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, uses key frequency, according to Wikipedia, to build a keyboard sculpture. Taller keys equals higher frequency.

  Conclusions – This was just a first go at trying to create a data driven 3d sculpture. I wound up scaling the keys a little bit too much in the vertical direction. The weight of the tall keys caused the towers to tilt at an angle. I plan on showing this prototype to a few people that will hopefully give me more ideas for new data sets to look at. I want to try and use the CNC for future data driven sculptures. I also want to try and include color into the sculpture somehow.

  Not bad for a first run. My proposed next step: Sculpturize the entire computer. You've got your keyboard. Next use some tracking software for mouse button clicks, and then use this software to track the mouse pointer for a sculptured monitor.

  [Keyboard Frequency Sculpture via Boing Boing]

• Gender and time comparisons on Twitter

  June 9, 2011 to Online Applications  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Men and women are different. You know that. But do they tweet differently? Tweetolife is a simple application that lets you compare and contrast what men and women tweet about. Simply type in a search term or phrase and compare. For example, search for love, and 63 percent of tweets that contain that word were from women, based on the sample data collected between November 2009 and February 2010.
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• All roads lead to philosophy, on Wikipedia

  June 8, 2011 to Network Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Jeffrey Winter tests a hunch about links leading to philosophy on Wikipedia:

  There was an idea floating around that continuously following the first link of any Wikipedia article will eventually lead to "Philosophy." This sounded like a reasonable assertion, one that makes a certain amount of sense in retrospect: any description of something will typically use more general terms. Following that idea will eventually lead… somewhere.

  Winter's curiosity led to this simple mashup. Type in some terms in the search bar and see where those topics lead to. Lo and behold, they all reach philosophy somehow. The above was my own search for economy, poop, science, Forrest Gump, hamburger, and Chicago. Philosophy: the Kevin Bacon of Wikipedia.

  [Xefer | Thanks, Nigel]

• Approaching data, a UX perspective

  June 8, 2011 to Design  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  UX designer and consultant, Hunter Whitney, describes a good mindset as you start digging into data, with the end target of visualization. "Why might you want to collect data about something and are you sure you know what you really need? ... How are the data stored? ... How are they summarized (statistically) and modified? ... How are the charts displayed, formatted, and presented in the context of the full interface?"

  [UX Magazine | Thanks, Elise]

• Comparing current data boom to past waves

  June 8, 2011 to News  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  Pete Warden, for O'Reilly Radar, compares current data responsibilities with those of harbor masters from the Victorian era. Warden warns:

  Specialists like us who can understand and interpret data are in a privileged position. Most people have an exaggerated respect for arguments expressed as numbers or visualizations, because they don't understand how many assumptions and simplifications go into these creations. It's our job to remember that and balance our enthusiasm about the power of our techniques with some humility about their limits.

  In other words: You should learn statistics. You don't have to go out and get a PhD, but it's helpful to be able to think like a statistician, so that you know the right way to think about data.

• Best of FlowingData – May 2011

  June 7, 2011 to Best of FlowingData  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  I wish there was a way to slow down time. Another month whirled by just like that. In case you missed them, here are the most popular posts from the past month. Thanks again for sharing, tweeting, and liking. Every bit helps this little blog of mine reach a larger audience.

  1. Flash vs. HTML5
  2. Seven year itch: When do people get married and divorced?
  3. Plush statistical distribution pillows
  4. How to map connections with great circles
  5. Find everywhere you can go in 15 minutes or less
  6. MacGyver recipe book - All 7 seasons of diversions and mischief
  7. Geography of hate
  8. A century of deaths and a lot of fake blood
  9. Why you shouldn't eat farmed fish - a graphical explanation
  10. Better Life Index measures well-being across countries

• GeoCommons 2.0, now with more mapping features

  June 6, 2011 to Online Applications  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  GeoCommons, an open repository of data and maps, launched version 2.0 this week, which is more feature-rich and robust than the first. Two of the major updates have to do with the fast-changing data landscape: amount of data and browser technology.
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• FlowingData is brought to you by…

  June 6, 2011 to Sponsors  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  My many thanks to the FlowingData sponsors. They help me keep this site up and running, and FlowingData wouldn't be what it is without them. Check 'em out. They help you make sense of and communicate with data.

  Column Five Media — Whether you are a startup that is just beginning to get the word out about your product, or a Fortune 500 company looking to be more social, they can help you create exciting visual content – and then ensure that people actually see it.

  InstantAtlas — Enables information analysts and researchers to create highly-interactive online reporting solutions that combine statistics and map data to improve data visualization, enhance communication, and engage people in more informed decision making.

  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.

• Simple guide to drunkenness

  June 3, 2011 to Infographics  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  From Aran Kanani on DeviantArt. Try easing up on the tequila and maybe sticking in that middle realm next time, yeah? Have a nice weekend, all.

• Visualize This: Brainstorming book ideas

  June 3, 2011 to The Book  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  When I first got the opportunity to write a book, I was excited about it, and then I had to figure out what I was going to write about. Data visualization, obviously, but what about it? I was all over the place, and my early ideas are actually nothing like what Visualize This is now.
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• Trulia Crime Map helps you find safe living places

  June 2, 2011 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Real estate site Trulia made a great move when they acquired mapping outfit Movity late last year to help users make informed decisions in home buying. A month ago, they launched a price reductions map to let you see how housing prices were changing. Now you can see what crime is like in that area you're thinking about living in with Crime Map.
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