Visualization

• Compare presidential candidate fundraising

  February 2, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Presidential candidates have raised $186 million up to now, according to the Federal Election Commission. The New York Times lets you compare the amounts raised by each candidate, over time and space. Simply select a candidate on the left, and another on the right to see how they match up. Fundraising by candidates from previous elections, at the same time of year, are also included for context.

  While not the focus of the interactive, the distributions for donation size at the bottom seem to be especially telling.

  [New York Times via infosthetics]

• Bird migration patterns mapped

  February 2, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Birds move. eBird shows us how.

  Understanding patterns of bird occurrence at continental scales has long been one of eBird's fundamental challenges. Only now, with 42 million records and ever more thorough coverage nationwide, is this becoming possible. Ongoing research at the Cornell Lab is currently producing cutting-edge graphics that we are pleased to share here. Day-by-day predictions of species occurrence allows these models to shine a spotlight on the most awe-inspiring of natural spectacles: the ebb and flow of bird migration.

  Cutting edge? No. They are thorough though, with maps (in the form of animated gifs) for a large number of species.

  [eBird | Thanks, Ed]

• Mapping the drug wars in Mexico

  February 1, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Diego Valle-Jones maps homicides and trafficking routes in Mexico.

  To unclutter the map and following the lead of the paper Trafficking Networks and the Mexican Drug War by Melissa Dell, I decided to only show the optimal highways (according to my own data and Google Directions) to reach the US border ports from the municipalities with the highest drug plant eradication between 1994 and 2003 and the highest 2d density estimate of drug labs based on newspaper reports of seizures. The map is a work in progress and is still missing the cocaine routes, but hopefully I'll be able to add them shortly.

  There's lots to look at and interact with here. To start, there are bubbles that cluster homicides by region and major highway routes in black.

  Click on any bubble and you get a time series for the corresponding area, going back to 2004. Or if you like, draw your own polygon to see the time series for specific regions. Pointers on the time series highlight significant events. There's also a slider that lets you see numbers on the map for different years. A layer underneath the bubbles lets you see high density areas for marijuana, opium, and drug labs.

  Take a look at the full map for yourself. This is nice work by Valle-Jones.

  [Diego Valle-Jones | Thanks, Diego]

• Visualizing popularity of Yahoo homepage stories

  January 30, 2012 to Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Yahoo is not what it used to be, but many parts of it are still alive and well. In a follow-up to their email interactive, Yahoo, along with visualization firm Periscopic, explores the popularity of articles that appear on the Yahoo homepage. It's a visualization that shows activity within the Content Optimization and Relevance Engine (C.O.R.E. for short).

  The focus is on the center, which has the same layout as that of the stories on the Yahoo homepage. Story on top, and links to more stories on the bottom. Except in the interactive, you can see demographics of those who viewed the story. The slider on the bottom lets you go back up to 24 hours to see what was hot during each hour.

  It gets more fun when you use the buttons on the left and right to view popular stories among age and gender cohorts and button on the right that let you see stories by categories. The rotating particles, each representing a clickable story, in the background provide a final flourish.

  Oh, and extra nerd points for HTML5.

  [Yahoo]

• Words used in SOTU and Republican presidential candidates in debates

  January 24, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Jonathan Corum for The New York Times examines word usage by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union addresses and the words used by Republican candidates in their debates. Many of you will be happy to know that no word clouds were harmed in the making of this graphic.

  [New York Times]

• In perspective: One hour of video uploaded to YouTube per second

  January 24, 2012 to Infographics  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  YouTube surpassed the one hour of video uploaded per second threshold recently. To put that rate into perspective, they launched a fun illustration-based site, One Hour Per Second. Big team effort headed by Punk & Butler, illustrations by Alex Eben Meyer, animation by Justin Young, and development by Use All Five.
  Continue Reading

• Job growth at the best companies to work for

  January 24, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Nicolas Rapp and Anne Vandermey with a straightforward look at new jobs added at the top 100 companies to work for, according to Fortune.

  Fat paychecks, sweet perks, fun colleagues, and over 70,000 jobs ready to be filled — these employers offer dream workplaces. Like Google, which reclaims the top spot this year to become a three-time champion. Meet this year’s top 100, network with the winners on LinkedIn, and more.

  Number of new jobs added or lost is on the horizontal, and number of employees at the start of the year on the vertical. Bubble size represents number of job applicants.

  There were 7.6 million applicants to Starbucks last year. That's insane.

  [Nicolas Rapp]

• Geographic connectedness via Twitter locations

  January 24, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Eric Fischer has mastered the art of making use of geotagged things from social sites like Twitter and Flickr. In his most recent set, Fischer maps connectedness via geotagged tweet density (using Dijkstra's algorithm). I just got back from Berkeley a few hours ago, so the map of East Bay travels is of most interest to me.

  The main implication, as far as I am concerned, being that because of its traditional focus on downtown commuters, BART does not do a very good job of serving the most promising corridor in Berkeley and North Oakland, which would run approximately under San Pablo, University, the UC Berkeley campus, Telegraph, a jog over to College, Broadway, 40th/Linda, Grand, and some sort of route from the Grand-Lake district crossing Park Boulevard to near 14th and Foothill. Some of this, especially at the south end, would be difficult because of topography, but it could probably be approximated. Needless to say, if this were to be constructed, it would have to be pretty much entirely in subway to avoid tearing down the neighborhoods it would intend to serve.

  There are also maps for New York and Chicago.

• Music listening trends and the news in 2011

  January 23, 2012 to Infographics  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Anyone who uses a social music service like Rdio or last.fm has probably noticed an album's sudden rise in popularity after certain events. For example, when Amy Winehouse died, her album received exponentially more plays than usual. Other times the increase in plays for a certain artist is simple, like the release of a new album. Last.fm takes a look at these patterns in 2011 through the lens of scrobbles, which is basically how last.fm users log what they're listening to.

  Download the data here [zip file] and have a go yourself.

  [Last.fm | Thanks, @dwtkns]

• SOPA opposition surges

  January 20, 2012 to Infographics  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  ProPublica has been tracking members of Congress who oppose and support SOPA. You can view by party and chamber, and you can even sort by campaign contributions from movie, music, and television. Above shows the quick change from January 18 to 19.

  [ProPublica]

• High resolution biomass map, at management scale

  January 18, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  In 2010, NASA released a map that shows world forest heights. Robert Simmon, using data from The Woods Hole Research Center, has produced an even higher resolution map, down to the management scale:

  In the end, the research team was able to construct a map with higher resolution and more precise detail than any large-scale map of forest biomass ever made. The map reveals the checkerboard patterns of logging in the old growth of the Pacific Northwest and the highly managed tree farms of the Southeast. In the Midwest, trees outline the rivers and the edges between farms, while forests re-emerge on land that was once cleared for crops. In the Mid-Atlantic and New England, lands that were stripped bare in the early years of the nation are now tree-covered again—though with many urban developments amidst the forest.

  [NASA | Thanks, Michael]

• Watching ‘wtf Wikipedia’ as SOPA/PIPA blackout begins

  January 17, 2012 to Network Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  While SOPA and PIPA are no laughing matter (join the strike), the reaction from those on Twitter who don't know what's going on is great entertainment. Do a search on 'wtf wikipedia' for tweets from confused individuals who are trying to find information on stuff. I'm just going to leave Twitter trackers Revisit and Spot, by Moritz Stefaner and Jeff Clark, respectively, open all day. "OMG I'm doing homework and Wikipedia is blacked out wtf !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

• Amazon recommendation network

  January 17, 2012 to Network Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Whenever you look at an item on Amazon, the site recommends related items that you might be interested in. So in a way, these items are connected by how people buy. Artist and designer Christopher Warnow uses the metaphor to create a network of Amazon products, where each node represents an item, and connections, or edges, represent common bonds of recommendations. Simply enter an Amazon link, and Warnow's software generates a network.
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• Optimized dart throwing and other games

  January 17, 2012 to Statistical Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  If you play darts just trying to hit the bullseye, you aren't playing for maximum output. Don't fret though. DataGenetics is here to help with mathematical advice on how to play the game based on your skill level (Update: This is very similar to the dart work by Ryan Tibshirani, et al.):

  The optimal strategy for aiming depends on your skill as darts player. A very skillful player should aim for the middle of the triple 20; Much of the time he will hit his target, and the times he misses will be few enough that his average score will still be high.

  A very poor player should aim close to the bullseye, as just hitting the board will be an achievement (and a scoring one at that!). Aiming for the center maximizes the chances of hitting something.

  But what happens between these two extreme?

  I was a kid the last time I threw darts, and I was more interested in throwing them as high as I could in the air watching them stick into the grass. Maybe it's time to try it the right way.

  See also optimal gameplay for Battleship, Risk, and Candyland.

  [DataGenetics via infosthetics]

• Spot visualizes tweet commonalities

  January 16, 2012 to Network Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Twitter is an organic online location, full of retweets, conversations, and link sharing. Jeff Clark tries to show these inner workings with his newest interactive, Spot. Enter a query in the field on the bottom left, and Spot retrieves the most recent 200 tweets. You then can choose among five views: group, words, timeline, users, and source.
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• Find out what percent you are in

  January 15, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Accompanying an article on the variations of the wealthiest one percent, The New York Times provides this interactive map to see what percent you're in. Simply enter your household income and see how you compare in metropolitan areas with over 50,000 households.

  Nation-wide, a household income over $383,000 puts you in the top one percent. However, a lower household income of $179,000 puts you in the top one percent in Flint, Michigan. The same wage in San Diego, California puts you only in the top eight percent.

  Also: what jobs the top one percent have.

  Update: There was also a fine print version.

  [New York Times]

• World subway paths at scale

  January 13, 2012 to Mapping  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  Urban planner Neil Freeman maps the world's subway systems to scale in a minimal style resembling the scribbles or renderings of weird sea creatures by a two-year-old. I wish there were nodes to show stops, too, but the contrasts between the compact TRTA in Tokyo and RATP in Paris, and the spread out Seoul Metro and Transport for London is an interesting look.

  [Neil Freeman via @kennethfield]

• Cinemetrics creates a visual fingerprint for movies

  January 12, 2012 to Data Art  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  As we saw with movie barcodes, each film has a uniqueness that can be broken into bits of data. Cinemetrics, by Frederic Brodbeck, provides a different view.
  Continue Reading

• New Hampshire results trackers

  January 10, 2012 to Infographics  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  The New Hampshire results trackers are out in full force tonight. Ordered by my inclination to leave open in the background: Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, MSNBC, and CNN. Take your pick.

• Geometry of pasta

  January 10, 2012 to Visualization  •  Nathan Yau  •  Share on Twitter

  

  From Pasta by Design by George L. Legendre, it's exactly what you think it is. More pasta and equations at The New York Times. I may never see Fusilli the same way again. [via]