Statistical Visualization

• Is the New Google Visualization API Going to Limit Our Data Imagination?

  March 21, 2008 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Google recently released a visualization API that allows you to share embeddable visualization on your website, create Google Gadgets that can be shared and reused, and create extensions for existing Google products. Andrew asks, "Will this shape the future of data visualization online?"

  On one side, this is exciting for the visualization field, because when Google talks, everyone listens. On the opposing side, could this be another Google Maps type of thing? Google Maps was cool at first, but now, mashup after mashup has left me bored and disillusioned. Ultimately though, I like to think that this API is going to benefit all of us.

  What the API Offers

  There's a slew of charts, graphs, gidgets, and gadgets available that you'll see in the gallery.

  Time Series

  I'm sure this Google Finance-looking graph will make a lot of people happy.

  

  Gauges

  These are, um, interesting.

  

  Maps

  We've seen this before, but the difference here is that it's now in widget form, which means a hook into Google Docs and other apps.

  

  How We Will Benefit

  If Google visualization becomes popular, visualization, in general, grows in popularity. People who weren't exposed will now know more, and if all goes according to plan, data awareness has a chance to develop.

  As an example, Google Maps made online mapping what it is now - commonplace. Remember when online mapping was only limited to the big boys? Now everyone can mashup to their heart's content. People know how to use it and similar mapping applications and because of that, more "idea people" ask for mapping. As a result there is more opportunity.

  Similarly, with the data viz API, we'll see data mashups outside of the map. Data visualization will no longer just be for the big boys, but at the same time, we'll still be able to make our own designs with a wider audience ready to experiment and play.

  Good or Bad?

  What do you think? Is the Google visualization API going to limit our imagination where we get stuck in a Google-ish funk; or is data and visualization awareness ready to rise to a point where we all benefit?

• 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe

  March 12, 2008 to Mapping, Network Visualization, Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  I just created a new Twitter account, and it got me to thinking about all the data visualization I've seen for Twitter tweets. I felt like I'd seen a lot, and it turns out there are quite a few. Here they are grouped into four categories - network diagrams, maps, analytics, and abstract.

  Network Diagrams

  Twitter is a social network with friends (and strangers) linking up with each other and sharing tweets aplenty. These network diagrams attempt to show the relationships that exist among users.

  Twitter Browser

  

  Twitter Social Network Analysis

  The ebiquity group did some cluster analysis and managed to group tweets by topic.

  

  Twitter Vrienden

  

  Twitter in Red

  I'm not completely sure how to read this one. I looks like it starts from a single user and then shoots out into the network.

  

  Twitter Network

  

  Continue Reading

• Explore Your del.icio.us Tags and Bookmarks On 6pli

  March 4, 2008 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Santiago, who I met at the Visualizar workshop, forwarded me his work on the visualization of del.icio.us tags and bookmarks called 6pli. Normally, I'm not a big fan of network diagrams, because I always seem to get lost in all the nodes and edges cluttering up the place. I feel differently about 6pli though.

  6pli sets itself apart with really smooth, responsive interaction and three views - elastic net 3-d, elastic net 2-d, and circle 2-d. All three views rely on a metric of tag-similarity. So the more co-tags that a single tag has with its neighbors, the closer the tags will be in proximity.

  Was that confusing? OK, it'll be more clear with pretty pictures.

  Elastic Net 3-D

  The elastic net 3-D (pictured above) shows tags and bookmarks in a 3-dimensional view. Tags are in rectangles and bookmarks are circles. A bookmark (or circle) will be closer to another bookmark (or circle) if it has more tags in common. Similarly, if a tag is often grouped with other tags, it will appear closer to that group. Click on a tag, and a list of bookmarks show up on the right.

  The cool part is when you start playing with the 3-D network blobby. You can rotate it like a globe and the movement is controlled by spring action. The visualization's response is immediate and really smooth with nice transitions from one view to the next, unlike this paragraph.

  Elastic Net 2-D

  

  The 2-dimensional view is the same principle as the 3-D. The only difference is the 2-D is a projection of the 3-D view onto a flat plane. Smooth interaction still applies here.

  Circle 2-D

  

  Finally, the circle view arranges tags and bookmarks into their del.icio.us bundles. Each circle is divided homogeneously and the radius of the circle can me manually modified.

  One thing I would recommend for the beta release is some kind of input to type in a tag or the name of a bookmark. Right now, the starting point feels kind of random, but if I could specify where I wanted to explore, I think the viz would be that much more useful.

  Check out my 6pli del.icio.us tags viz here.

• Can We Improve this Graphic Showing History of Bipartisan Senate?

  February 28, 2008 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  David forwarded me his graphic on the modern two party system in the United States senate which essentially shows the senate's bipartisanship over time. It made me happy to see someone in political science using R, playing around with data, and taking a stab at creating a useful graphic.

  Improving the Graphic

  While the graphic is indeed useful, I think there are some things that could make it even better. Here are thoughts that I sent to David.

  • I wasn't immediately sure what each visual cue represented e.g. size of state abbrev. until I reached the bottom. It might be worth making the annotation more prominent either by position, size, or color or all three.
  • To me, the congress numbers don't matter so much, but that just might be I don't have a lot of learning on the history of American government.
  • I'm wondering if there's some way to make the labeling of the years more concise? If you just labeled with the first year of the two-year term, would it be obvious that you're describing a two-year term? What if you took away the alternating gray background and just made it all white and then had a bar timeline-type thing on top (and bottom)?
  • What if you tried to use a color scheme? I mean, you have the red and blue for the reps and dems (which I think is right), but the gradient for the senate counts turns very bright pink and purple which doesn't go too well. Then there's the cyan, yellow, and green which doesn't seem to have any specific significance other than each color represents something. What I mean is... is there a reason you chose those colors?
  • It might be worth making the annotations bigger so that you don't have to "zoom in" to read.
  • I think I would make the median lines a bit more prominent, but that's just me.
  • There's a lot of cool stuff getting represented here, and I wonder if anything might benefit as a separate graph. Would this benefit at all as a series of graphs instead of one large graphic?

  Now It's Your Turn

  So that's my opinion. What do you think? Judging from our FlowingData Facebook group (which I'm happy to see is growing), we have a very diverse bunch from design, statistics, computer science, and some other areas, so I'm eager to hear what the rest of you think about this visualization.

• Is an Animated Transition From a Scatter Plot to a Bar Graph Effective?

  February 20, 2008 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Statistical graphics are kind of stuck in a static funk where you create a plot in R, Excel, or whatever, and you can't really interact with it. If you want another graphic, you manually create it. Hence, Jeffrey Heer and George G. Robertson investigated the benefits of using animation in statistical graphics. Continue Reading

• How to Read (and Use) a Box-and-Whisker Plot

  February 15, 2008 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  The box-and-whisker plot is an exploratory graphic, created by John W. Tukey, used to show the distribution of a dataset (at a glance). Think of the type of data you might use a histogram with, and the box-and-whisker (or box plot, for short) could probably be useful.

  The box plot, although very useful, seems to get lost in areas outside of Statistics, but I'm not sure why. It could be that people don't know about it or maybe are clueless on how to interpret it. In any case, here's how you read a box plot.

  Reading a Box-and-Whisker Plot

  Let's say we ask 2,852 people (and they miraculously all respond) how many hamburgers they've consumed in the past week. We'll sort those responses from least to greatest and then graph them with our box-and-whisker.

  Take the top 50% of the group (1,426) who ate more hamburgers; they are represented by everything above the median (the white line). Those in the top 25% of hamburger eating (713) are shown by the top "whisker" and dots. Dots represent those who ate a lot more than normal or a lot less than normal (outliers). If more than one outlier ate the same number of hamburgers, dots are placed side by side.

  Find Skews in the Data

  The box-and-whisker of course shows you more than just four split groups. You can also see which way the data sways. For example, if there are more people who eat a lot of burgers than eat a few, the median is going to be higher or the top whisker could be longer than the bottom one. Basically, it gives you a good overview of the data's distribution.

  That's all there is to it, so the next time you're thinking of making a bar graph or a histogram, think about using Tukey's beloved box-and-whisker plot too.

• New Hampshire Graphic from The Times

  January 11, 2008 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  This graphic is from The New York Times graphics department. It matches the FlowingData colors. That is all. Oh, and it's excellent, but that's a given, right? Note the use of each bar's two dimensions.

• One Day in the Life of the Average American

  December 17, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Time Magazine's multimedia section has a fun, little piece showing some statistics for a day in the life of the average American. There's some mapping for average commute time, annual traffic delays, and city population shifts. I'm not a huge fan of the map on the third dimension, but oh well.

  There's also a simple grid ranking jobs by level of happiness. Priests are apparently the happiest with gas station attendants at the very bottom. Poor gas station attendants. I guess I might classify myself as a computer programmer which is somewhere in between waiters and dress makers. Maybe I should consider a change in focus. Although, I could also consider myself an engineer which is towards the top of the rankings. Alright, I'm an engineer. The title of "computer programmer" has a weird stigma attached to it anyways.

• A Magazine Dedicated Entirely to Visualizing Something Useful

  October 19, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  GOOD Magazine is "media for people who give a damn."

  While so much of today's media is taking up our space, dumbing us down, and impeding our productivity, GOOD exists to add value. Through a print magazine, feature and documentary films, original multimedia content and local events, GOOD is providing a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world.

  My favorite part of the magazine is the transparency section, which is a series of graphics displaying data in one way or another. The graphic (or video, I guess) above shows what companies are paying to advertise in New York City. The Walmart graphic I talked about earlier is in the most recent GOOD.

  What if...

  What if instead of just a section, there was an entire magazine that was a transparency section? Now that would be awesome. It could be a mix of the media & design in GOOD with some real statistical graphics. It would be a complete visual experience with of course a short blurb on each, but the magazine would focus on the graphics to inspire change and improve awareness. (Picture good. Words.... baaaad.)

  Each issue would hover around a specific theme like the environment or economics; or even better, each issue could be more specific covering U.S. pollution or the decline of toy sales. I wonder how hard it would be to start something like that. Online first, print second? Is there a magazine already like this? If there isn't, there needs to be.

• Presidential Nomination Polls With Smoothers

  October 11, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  It almost feels like I see a new poll every day for who's leading in the presidential race. There's usually a good amount of fluctuation within a single poll with sampling margin of error and then of course the numbers vary across multiple polls. This can be confusing at times, so Pollster put all the results in one scatter plot. Then they stuck a smoother through all the points (for each candidate), and just like that, the viewer gets a general sense of how each candidate has been doing.

  Keep in mind that the amount of noise (or bumps in the curve) is going to vary depending on the type of estimation you use, so I wouldn't place the smaller curves under too much scrutiny. I'm not sure what method Pollster is using, but it's interesting to see the overall trends. Could we be looking at a double New Yorker election?

  Pollster also offers the raw poll data, so in case you want to have some of your own fun, there's data waiting for you.

  [via Mike Love]

• iPod Design and Apple Stock Over the Years

  September 9, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Wall Street Journal put up a nice little graphic showing the evolution of the iPod along with Apple's stock price. Semi-informative, I guess. Probably more of a fun graphic than anything else. I think it's slightly misleading, suggesting the iPod was the only reason Apple's stock changed. Let's not forget about the iBook, iMac, Macbook, etc releases. Nevertheless, it's cool to see Apple's sexy design over the years.

  [link via Core77]

• The Times: Wealthiest Americans Ever

  July 15, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  In honor of my New York Times induction day, a visualization of The Wealthiest Americans Ever. You think good ol' Billy would be there at the top of the list, worth $82 billion, there have been a few who have preceded the software giant e.g. John D. Rockefeller worth a crazy $192 billion. Just think how many Jack in the Box tacos you could buy with that kind of money.

• Gas Prices Over Time, 2000-2006

  July 12, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  While on the subject of gas prices, Foreign Policy has a graph of the prices per gallon of gasoline from 2000 to 2006. With the US at the lower tier, I feel like a bit of a whiner ("Waa waa waa, it costs 30 dollars to fill my tank"). At the lower end, it seems Venezuela seems the place to be, with some major government subsidizing going on.

  
  

• America Wins in Petrol Consumption per Day

  July 12, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  A very simple graph from The Economist (spiced up a bit with a picture of a delicious gasoline droplet) that quickly gets its point across. The United States uses a lot of petrol compared to other countries, while at the same time, it costs less to fill up a Honda Civic in the US than most other places.

  However, the left graph is based on 2003 data. I wonder what the graph looks like now? Similar, I'm sure, but still something to look at.

  Anyways, something really interesting here -- even though Venezuela has crazy low gas prices, the average petrol consumption per day over there is still quite low. Whether this is a cultural thing or just some weird supply and demand thing (that I have no clue about) might be worth some investigating.

  In any case, just because we have lower gas prices (that we still complain about) than a lot of the world, we're still consuming a lot. What's our excuse?

• Focus Cloud: Tag Cloud with a Twist

  July 1, 2007 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Everyone's familiar with tag clouds, but Aaron Bassett put a slight twist to the now commonplace clouds. Aaron calls them Focus Clouds. Basically, they're still tag clouds, but instead of weighting tags by number of times used, there's some weight given to how recent a tag is. There's also some simple highlighting going on with related tags.

  The idea is that the focus cloud then gives you an idea of what is currently of interest. Aaron's code is available on his blog. The code is a bit buggy, but interesting nevertheless.