Misc. Visualization

• Sorting algorithms visualized

  July 26, 2010 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (1)

  

  This will be lost on many of you, but to the programmers this will make perfect sense. Basically, when programming, there are a lot of times when you have a long list of numbers or words that you'll want sorted greatest to least or alphabetically. The way this is done will vary by what algorithm you use. Aldo Cortesi visualizes these sorting algorithms, showing just how each one works.

  If you're confused but still interested, here's a simple example.

  Let's say you have a list of numbers from one to five listed as such: 4, 20, 6, 12, 100. We want to organize these systematically least to greatest. The easiest way would be to setup five "spots" and then go through each number, starting at the beginning, and decide if the number is bigger or smaller than the number we already looked at. That's not the most efficient way to do it though, and when you have millions of numbers to sort, instead of just five, then efficiency matters.

  [Thanks, Marlena]

• Discuss: Powerpoint is the enemy?

  April 27, 2010 to Discussion, Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (54)

  

  In reference to the above, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, leader of the American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, joked during a meeting, "When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war." The rest of the NYT article goes on to describe the suck that is Powerpoint.

  Is Powerpoint really that bad though? I know we like to poke fun sometimes, but is it a limitation of the software, or is it users' lack of design skills? I mean there's a site dedicated to beautiful slide decks. Browse through those, and you start to think maybe it's the latter.

  So we have a chicken-and-the-egg problem. Do people just not know how to use Powerpoint or does Powerpoint push people to the bad side? Sound off in the comments below.

  [Thanks, Julia]

• How Genetics Works

  March 5, 2010 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (21)

  

  Simple yet effective. Any questions? [via 9gag | Thanks, Barry]

• Man as Industrial Palace, Animated

  February 24, 2010 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (12)

  

  In 1926, Fritz Kahn illustrated man as a working factory in his famous poster, Man as Industrial Palace. Tiny guys in each body system perform their own specific job. A camera man controls the eyes, groups of thinkers sit up top, and the guys at the bottom handle the dirty work.
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• Excessively Labeled Airplane Tells You Where the Big Cheese Sits

  February 5, 2010 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (9)

  

  In case the in-flight pamphlet isn't enough for you, everything on this Kulula airplane is labeled for your convenience.
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• Dropped Food. Should You Eat it?

  January 22, 2010 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (28)

  

  Since you'll be trying every single drink recipe in the engineer's guide this weekend, you're most likely going to drop some food on the ground. Consult this flowchart to decide whether to eat it. Results may vary by individual.

  Food on the ground, food on the ground. Looking like a fool with your food on the ground.

• Timescapes to Compare Chopin Recordings

  January 13, 2010 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (21)

  

  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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• Information vs. Confusion

  October 23, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (16)

  

  You gotta love Jessica Hagy. If you've got the skills you should be able to widen the valley in that curve significantly.

  Have a nice weekend all.

  [via Cool Infographics]

• An Addiction to Charts and Graphs

  October 16, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (6)

  Haha, Jason Segel is hilarious. In this episode of How I Met Your Mother Segel's character Marshall has an interesting addiction that I think many FD readers can relate to.
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• Google Acquisitions Subway Map

  September 29, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (9)

  

  Tack another graphic to the growing list of subway map metaphors. Meet the Boss "maps" Google acquisitions and investments, color-coding tracks by industry. The maroon track, for example, represents video, hence YouTube, which also interconnects with advertising and web services.

  The design is nothing new (and kind of overdone), but the data are pretty interesting. I've never even heard of most of the acquisitions.

  Does anyone know who was the first to use the subway map metaphor?

  [via TechCrunch]

• Getting a Good Night’s Sleep – Good Night and Tough Luck

  September 17, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (12)

  

  Hilarious as always, Christoph Niemann illustrates in his graphical New York Times op-ed how getting a good night's sleep is easier said than done, especially when you have a small bladder, mosquitoes that won't go away, and a kid with nightmares. Enjoy.
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• A Road Map to Success

  September 6, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (12)

  

  May you make it to the top of the mountain of success. I think I'm somewhere around the mountain of lack of preparation. Where are you?

  [via Strange Maps]

  UPDATE: Here's the full-sized version, originally from The Etude in 1913. [Thanks, @idefine]

• Highs and Lows of Being a Young Man

  September 4, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (5)

  

  i-am-bored graphs the horrible to awesome of becoming a man. Growing up ain't easy. So who's going to do the highs and lows of being a young woman?

  Have a nice weekend all.

• Total Eclipse of the Heart (Flowchart)

  August 28, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (17)

  

  Jeannie Harrell takes Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler, and puts it in flowchart form. Yes, you guessed it. It's Friday. And what better way to start the weekend with the music video in all its 1980s glory.
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• Pepsi and Coca-Cola Logo Design Over the Past Hundred Years

  August 13, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (19)

  

  There have actually been some subtle changes in the Coca-Cola logo but not nearly as dramatic as the Pepsi logos. I personally think the new Pepsi design is atrocious. They should have stopped in 1973.

  [via clusterflock & Daily Dish & Consumerist]
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• Compare What Your Senators and Reps are Talking About With Congress Speaks

  July 31, 2009 to Misc. Visualization, Online Applications  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (10)

  

  There's a lot of talking in congressional meetings, but what are your state senators and representatives talking about? Design group Periscopic explores what congress men and women said from 2007 to 2008 in this tongue-in-cheek comparison tool with talking heads. The best part about the tool is that behind the humor is actually something useful.

  Compare word distributions of senators, of states, of a senator to a state, or representatives, so on and so forth. We get breakdowns by gender, number of words spoken, and by state. All data come from public records.

  [via @krees]

• Three Ingredients to Make the Perfect Business

  July 24, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (12)

  

  Thanks to Jessica Hagy and her Indexed project, we've seen lots of graphs and venn diagrams to communicate ideas outside of data. Some are bad and others are good. Here's one of the good ones. Bud Caddell shows what it takes to make the perfect business, or more generally, just about everyone's dream - to get paid for what you're good at and love to do. Get the poster version of the graphic here.

  [via dataviz]

• 50 Cars to Make One Bus?

  May 11, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (1)

  

  Flygbussarna, a Swedish coach bus company, in partnership with the Acne marketing group, assembled 50 cars into one bus to highlight the production of carbon emissions. Assuming slightly more than one person per car on average, one coach bus could potentially replace 50 cars on the road and reduce carbon emissions some 10 times over. Continue Reading

• Music That Makes You Dumb

  April 3, 2009 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (33)

  Virgil Griffith, a CalTech graduate student, follows up books that make you dumb with music that makes you dumb. "Dumb" people listen to Lil' Wayne and "smart" ones listen to Beethoven, that is, if you believe that SAT is a good judge of smarts. I'm not sure if this is actually new or just became popular again because it was in the WSJ. Virgil put up the book version over a year ago. Oh well, it's Friday. I'm personally all over the board on this one. What kind of music do you like?
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• Flowchart Shows You What to Say During Sex

  September 5, 2008 to Misc. Visualization  •  Share on Twitter  •  Comments (4)

  

  This flowchart shows you what to say during private time with your special friend. Say goodbye to confusion and hello to deep conversations. Start from the middle of the chart and work your way out. Never again will you be at a loss for words.
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