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Last week in the forums

Nathan Yau — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:00:05 +0000

In case you're on the market for a data sciencey type job, there were a number of them posted to the forums this past week, along with some other schtuff.

SEM infographics freelance — Working is picking up and I need help covering all my client requests for SEM infographics...

Designer needed for animated cartogram — I am a financial publisher in need of a designer to create a cartogram of world GDP growth by nation...

Data Visualization and Charting Business Manager — Bloomberg is looking for a passionate, experienced individual to join the Charts, Technical Analysis and Graphics Business...

Data Visualization Genius — Young, fast-growing digital media startup seeks data visualization or UI expert...

Interaction Designer — Do you believe, in a freshman-year kind of way, that design just might save the world?

P.S. I changed the "Finding a Job" forum to "Job Board" since that's basically what it's used for. Are you an employer looking for a qualified data person? Post it to the board. It's free.

From the FlowingData Forums [July 3-17]

Nathan Yau — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:22:48 +0000

Visualize This: Obesity Rates by State

This segment of Visualize This is all about obesity rates in America. The data comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In 2008, every state in the US, except for one had an obesity rate greater than 20%. In 1994, there were zero. Here is the data for 2008. You can find data from 1985 to 2008 from the CDC site. Share your visualizations in this forum thread.

Thanks to all those who participated in the last Visualize This with Rambo kill counts. A little bit of Tableau, some R, and dare I say, Powerpoint. Be sure to check those out in the forums.

Interesting Threads

Edward Tufte is Talking at the Met - I know many of of you will be interested in this one. Tufte is giving a talk at the Met in NYC on classic drawings. Your ticket comes free with admission.
Help a Graduate Student Out - Do you collect data about yourself? Take this survey on personal informatics.
Mapping H1N1 Virus: Pattern of Spread Over Time - Do you have any suggestions on how to improve this graphic? Some put in their two cents while others provided their own work with the data.
Diseasome, Explore the Human Disease Network - A smooth network graph online to present scientific work.

From the FlowingData Forums [June 10-16]

Nathan Yau — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:45:54 +0000

Visualize This (and win)

This round of Visualize This is a fun one. We've got the Rambo kill chart, which shows well, a breakdown of kills in each of the four Rambo movies. It's surprisingly detailed with several cuts of the dataset like number of bad guys killed by Rambo with his shirt on and off, number of good guys killed by bad guys, number of people killed per minute, and several others.

The problem is that the data is just in a table. Surely we can do better than that. Can you visualize this?

Person with the best viz gets a copy of Darrell Huff's classic How to Lie with Statistics. Get your entry in by July 1. One entry per person.

Cool Threads

Visual Ideological History of the US Supreme Court: Alex Lundry visualizes the last seven decades of ideologies of US Supreme Court judges. Interact through the years and split the data in several ways.
Visualizing Biological Data: VisualMOA is an information browser for the Microbial Online Analysis database. Is it useful without subject knowledge?
Processing vs. Flash: Both are heavily used for visualization on the Web, but both have their pros and cons. Processing is good for coding beginners. Flash loads quicker using vectors. Which one should you use?
Mapping SPAM and Sensornet Attackers: Using some heat mapping and Circos, Ben, a visualization beginner, is looking for some input.

Ask Me Anything About Data Visualization (in the forums)

Nathan Yau — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:00:11 +0000

Do you have some data on your hands and don't know what to do with it? Are you wondering what the best way to graph a dataset might be? Want some input on stuff you made?

If you do, I encourage you to post your questions and requests to the FlowingData forums. I get a lot questions via email, but from now on, I'll only answer questions posted there.

It's not that I don't enjoy all of your emails. I really do. Rather, there's two reasons why I'm making the shift. The first is that it occurred to me that others might be able to learn from my responses, so if someone has a similar question to yours later on, they might be able to find an answer.

The second reason is that sometimes I don't know the answer (or don't have time to reply). If you ask your question in the forums though, others might be able to help too. I like those odds.

Share Your Links

Finally, if you find any interesting data goodies from around the Web, please do post them to the forums. Or if you've just released one of your own projects, you can put it there too. In fact, the forums would be a better place to do it than emailing me. I'm so flooded with email these days (aren't we all?) that it's been hard to keep up.

Sign Up Now

Go ahead and register in the forums now if you haven't done that already. It's free, it's easy, and will only take a few seconds.

Go on now, I'll wait for you...

Done? Cool. See, I told you it was easy.

A Few More Days Left for Visualize This

Nathan Yau — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:19:15 +0000

A quick reminder - there are about 5 days left for Visualize This: Piracy Edition. You know, something to do since you're not really working today anyways :).

Visualize This: Piracy for Oscar-nominated Movies

Nathan Yau — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:03:01 +0000

The first Visualize This for poverty rate in America was a very good start to something I hope to continue here on FlowingData. There were a lot of good entries and plenty of interesting discussion on what worked and what didn't. Some used existing tools while others went custom; some used a combination of both. There were entries that went for emotion and others that were built for pattern-finding. My pick for best is Luca Masud's take on things with D.C. as focal point.

Thanks for participating, everyone. Great job all around. I strongly encourage you to take a look at all the other entries and the discussion that followed if you haven't already. I'm looking forward to the next Visualize This - which brings me to my next point.

Your Mission, If You Choose to Accept it...

Andy from Waxy has been tracking release dates for Oscar-nominated films and then when they were eventually bootlegged. I've posted the data here. It seems that the time between US release date and bootleg increased this year. Go figure. Can you use visualization to find other interesting tidbits?

If you haven't joined the forums (free) yet, you'll want to do that first, and then post your visualization to this thread. Have fun!

Last Day to Put in Your Entry for Visualize This – Vote Now

Nathan Yau — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 09:36:25 +0000

A quick reminder: tomorrow is the last day to put in your entry for the first edition of Visualize This. There have been a lot of interesting visualization entries so far, so even if you're not planning on making a graphic, make sure you put in your two cents for which one you think is best.

Visualize This: Poverty Rate By Age in America

Nathan Yau — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 07:09:11 +0000

I'm going to try something new here at FlowingData in a section called Visualize This. Every two weeks I will post a dataset to the FlowingData forums for all of you to visualize. Download the data, visualize it (graph, chart, map, infographic, animation, etc), and post your work to the thread. As we've seen already, there are many ways to visualize a single dataset, and with multiple pairs of eyes, we get stories from different points of view. I will post the best visualization at the end of each cycle.

My hope for Visualize This is that we all learn from each other as well as use the opportunity to improve our visualization technique. From experience, I've found that the only way to really learn how to visualize data is by doing. Digital photography forums follow a similar format, and I think the idea can easily carry over to visualization.

Your Mission, If You Choose to Accept it...

To start things off, I've posted data for poverty rate by state and age in America. With the current state of the economy and the changes that are on their way, the dataset seemed fitting. Post your work here, and let's start Visualize This on the right foot. Have fun!

If you haven't registered yet, make sure you do that first. Also, if you have any ideas for future datasets we might want to use, go ahead and post those here.

Are you up for the challenge?

Are You a Freelance Data Visualization Designer/Consultant?

Nathan Yau — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 08:32:07 +0000

I frequently get requests or propositions for data visualization projects, but I almost always have to turn them down - not because they're not worth my while, but because I've made a conscious decision to try really hard to finish my PhD. To that end, I always wish there was a list or resource that I could at least refer people to for their data visualization needs. I know of a few freelancers, but I'm positive there are many others. If you do visualization freelance (that includes BI, infographics, maps, graphs, charts, etc), post to this thread in the FlowingData forums (NOT this post), and hopefully, I can get a list going that I can point potential clients to.

From the Forums: Contests, Self-surveillance, and Attachments

Nathan Yau — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:33:35 +0000

I made a few updates to the FlowingData forums last night - the main being the ability to upload attachments. You've always been able to post images, but now you don't have to link to some remote server. That means it's much easier to share visualization with everyone now. It's also where I will host all future contests and giveaways. So go register now!

Oh, and one more thing - I added two new sections for Events and Finding a Job, so if you're looking for or want to publicize a workshop or conference; or if you're looking for work or looking for someone to work for you, that'd be the place to do it.

From the Forums

Tis the season for... infographics contests - Win $500 from GOOD Magazine or a free subscription to Chance Magazine [Thanks, Alberto].

UK Wired Article Help - johno is writing a feature for UK Wired Magazine (launching this spring) on lifetracking and wants to talk to those involved with self-tracking.

Associate in Research for Software Development - There's a data visualization position open at Duke University

Visualization software used... - A short discussion what people use to visualize data.