Want to have some fun and win an Amazon gift certificate in the process? Read on.
Personal data visualization has a huge advantage over other types of visualization. Personal visualization is about you, for you, and the data is from you. That’s a ton of background information with very little effort. As Jeffrey Heer noted in Socializing Visualization, people tend to spend more time exploring data when they connect personally to what they are seeing.
This Project’s For You
Running off this idea, this summer project is all about you – literally.
Take a moment and think about the data “flowing” off of you. How much did you spend on coffee over the past month? How much sleep did you get yesterday or the past week? Did you gain or lose weight this year? Look through your past billing statements, your iTunes listening history, or your car’s odometer.
Do you have a certain number (or series of numbers) in your head now? What do you see?
How to Participate
Think about data that is specifically about and from you, and then email it to me with “Summer Project” in the subject line. Send as many entries as you like.
There’s just one catch — send me your data in the form of a graph, a photo, a hand-drawing, or any other visualization you can think of. It can be interactive or static, simple or complex, serious or humorous, analytical or artistic, or all the above. It’s up to you.
Don’t worry if you’re not a designer or expert of statistical graphics. All that matters is that you make something about you.
The End Result
In the end we’ll have a beautiful mosaic of graphics – each of which tells its own story. I’ll arrange all of your graphics (and some of my own) ever so beautifully and you will be part of the greatest PDF of all time.
Win a $40 Amazon Gift Certificate
As if personal insight and reflection weren’t enough, the person who creates my favorite “graphic” will win a $40 Amazon gift certificate. For serious. So what are you waiting for? Open up Illustrator, Excel, R, Processing, a sketch pad, your digital camera, or whatever it is use, and get creating!
Here’s some inspiration to get you started.
to get the ball rolling and for some more inspiration, take a look at Tim’s entries:
http://data.timgraham.net/
the self-visualization is a great idea –
while formulating at presentation for my college reunion (special psych dept celebration thing) I did a tag galaxy of the college – and found this most excellent visualization/display from on campus: http://www.flickr.com/photos/conspicuous/417122877/
a representation of US and Iraqi lives lost in the “war” on terrorism. This also speaks to today’s post on misunderstanding of probability.
the self-visualization is a great idea –
while formulating at presentation for my college reunion (special psych dept celebration thing) I did a tag galaxy of the college – and found this most excellent visualization/display from on campus: http://www.flickr.com/photos/conspicuous/417122877/
a representation of US and Iraqi lives lost in the “war” on terrorism. This also speaks to today’s post on misunderstanding of probability.
Excellent idea.
You have a closing date in mind?
Or is itjust through the end of summer?
Prashant – nope, no hard closing date (yet)… probably some time in august. i’ll be posting more details some time this week.