It’s Time for Another FlowingData 10k Giveaway – Quick Deadline

February 20, 2009

Topic

Contests

I majored in computer science. I hated it. I ran from it like the black plague. That was then though. This is now. It turns out that programming can actually be fun, and when you know how to program – if even just a little bit – it completely changes the way you deal with and visualize data, which is why Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art is next up on the giveaway.

The deadline for this one is the end of today: Feb 20 at 8pm EST.

Prize Description

Processing is a programming language that can help beginners do stuff with code they never thought possible. The learning curve is pretty shallow, and you get a lot of bang for your buck with surprisingly very little effort. That doesn’t mean it’s limited in what it can do though. Built on top of Java, Processing lets you do pretty amazing things when you know what you’re doing.

Processing: Creative Coding and Computation Art will help you in your path to coding enlightenment. “Create code, art, visualizations, and interactive applications with this powerful yet simple computer language and programming environment / Take a creative and fun approach to learning creative computer programming.” I think that sums it up nicely.

How to Enter

Leave a comment below that answers this question: What is data visualization? Make your answer an essay, a paragraph, a sentence, a word, a picture… OK, pretty much anything. The winner will be randomly selected at the end of today. Good luck.

Find giveaways still in progress here, here, and here.

UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed. The winner will be receiving an email shortly. Thanks for participating all. Keep watch for more giveaways on Monday.

80 Comments

  • Jan Willem Tulp — February 20, 2009 at 4:48 am

    Data Visualization is a way of presenting data that is most natural for humans. It allows for faster comprehension, better insight and a possibility to discover hidden relations of complex data sets. Most of all, it’s just cool!!

  • Simon Daly — February 20, 2009 at 4:53 am

    It is where data is given a visual form, usually to benefit the easy
    comprehension of what can be complex and large amounts of data.

  • Carmel — February 20, 2009 at 4:59 am

    Making statistics aesthetically pleasing

  • Alan Karagines — February 20, 2009 at 5:02 am

    Data Visualization is the Visual Art of creating order and understanding of ones environment even when it is WRONG!!

  • Elangovan — February 20, 2009 at 5:06 am

    Data Visualization is kind of representing data visually by which the human brain can grasp it for better understanding. Thinking about representation, there are hundred ways to make the data visually intuitive. Visualization should be Simple and Sweet.

  • B. Seward — February 20, 2009 at 5:12 am

    DATA VISUALIZATION

    Consonants: DTVSLZTN
    Vowels: AAIUAIAIO
    Spaces:

  • Balaji — February 20, 2009 at 5:26 am

    Data Visualization is a technique that how you represent the data when requested. It must give the user clear idea in a manner the layman should also understand. The information must be crisp and sleek.

  • gerartje — February 20, 2009 at 5:32 am

    Data visualization is for me presenting data, defined as information in a nice visual and comprehensive way.

  • Benjamin Wiederkehr — February 20, 2009 at 5:57 am

    Data visualization is a transversal discipline which harnesses the immense power of visual communication in order to explain, in an understandable manner, the relationships of meaning, cause and dependency which can be found among great abstract masses of information.

  • Ryan Sholin — February 20, 2009 at 6:08 am

    …something I’d like to learn more about.

  • SmeeZee — February 20, 2009 at 6:14 am

    Data visualisation is GREAT!!!! It is the way forward for presenting information. The recent strive in the financial markets is a perfect example of how the media should be using visualisation to communicate across the effects of this disaster. I am still in “shock” that major media outlets (in the UK at least) are not embracing this.

    Data visualisation is sopowerful I believe it should be used to show the effect of “global warming” both locally and globally. I hope to do some work on this, it is just a matter of getting the time.

  • Lawrie — February 20, 2009 at 6:32 am

    To me, data visualisation is about turning raw, dull, inaccessible data into understandable concepts and ideas, through the use of fun, interesting and beautiful graphics or interfaces. It’s about getting the meaning and impact out of the numbers, and into a form people can appreciate.

  • Zigor — February 20, 2009 at 7:10 am

    Data visualization is the art of communicating data in a meaningful and appealing way. Get your message through, in style.

  • Neil Charles — February 20, 2009 at 7:11 am

    Data Visualisation is…

    The art of presenting data.

  • martin joseph brej — February 20, 2009 at 7:26 am

    the visual display of quantitative information.

  • Ken Edwards — February 20, 2009 at 7:37 am

    Data visualization is a means of providing the reader with more value than the plain statistics or data.

  • Naveen Sinha — February 20, 2009 at 7:44 am

    script:storyboard::information:data visualization

  • Daniel Radu — February 20, 2009 at 7:45 am

    if the eyes are the window to the soul – it is really not that hard to read into what data visualization is

    we, humans, share this great ability to imagine things – that is less and less harvested due to the huge amount of pre-cooked visuals that are pumped in our brains nowadays on all media

    that’s why data visualization must be the key to learning old dogs new tricks. starting with visualizing simple physics, forces, particles, moving to social behavior and tribes – up to forecasting the future.

    data visualization might just be the next big thing in art, as well as it might teach us new ways to design the world. or it may just be a way for the young ones to discover what data is made of. or maybe, it is just a natural reaction to the huge amount of data our civilization is producing.

    so IMHO – data visualization is the machine trying to reach to us on some new levels. if we listen to it, make it our work, play with it, live by it, get amused, find it interesting – or ignore it, it’s really up to us.

  • Theo Seemann — February 20, 2009 at 7:50 am

    data visualization tries to show structures of the things that make this time the information age.

  • Pete — February 20, 2009 at 7:51 am

    Data visualization is the art of transforming a mass of discretized and decontextualized data back into imprecise, continuous and compact information for us who watch.

  • halfawake — February 20, 2009 at 8:08 am

    Data visualization is making numbers matter.

  • A. Dahl — February 20, 2009 at 8:36 am

    Data Visualization is the intersection of the academic and the creative.

    It makes data rich, contextual, and most importantly, accessible. Information is useless if no one can make sense of it.

  • jan. — February 20, 2009 at 9:01 am

    Showing the data without showing the data.

  • dennis — February 20, 2009 at 9:04 am

    clarity

  • Adam — February 20, 2009 at 9:20 am

    Data visualization takes large quantities of data that require lots of questions to understand and shrinks them into images that most people will accept at face value

  • Richard — February 20, 2009 at 9:28 am

    data visualization is presenting data to a targeted audience to tell a story, illustrate a point, or otherwise convince the audience that your understanding and representation of the data is accurate and logical, even if you might be wrong.

  • Mitch — February 20, 2009 at 9:36 am

    A picture is worth ….as many numbers as will fit.

  • Ben — February 20, 2009 at 9:44 am

    data visualization is a way of presenting data using a visual medium instead of raw numbers.

  • Sherman — February 20, 2009 at 9:53 am

    Data Visualization is an abstraction of numbers which are an abstraction of reality, that although an abstraction of an abstraction bring greater clarity and context to the viewer.

  • Steve Lianoglou — February 20, 2009 at 10:14 am

    It’s a way for me to convince you of what I want you to believe the data is saying.

  • Valeria Montero — February 20, 2009 at 10:31 am

    The greatest value of a data visualization picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expected to see.

  • Nathan Yau — February 20, 2009 at 10:33 am

    @Valeria – I think I’ve heard that quote somewhere.

  • Jack — February 20, 2009 at 10:41 am

    Wow. good stuff..

  • David Ma — February 20, 2009 at 10:51 am

    “Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, defined as information which has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information.”

    –Wikipedia

  • BCC — February 20, 2009 at 10:59 am

    Data visualization is the art of summarizing information (data) in a graphical form (as opposed to verbal or numeric forms). The objective of data visualization is to provide the audience with an efficient means of understanding a large collection of facts (data).

  • sdmonty — February 20, 2009 at 11:06 am

    Data visualization should do for numbers and statistics what poetry does for language in the written word: it should express deep, honest, truthful ideas in a condensed, thrifty, clever and (if possible) magical way.

  • nick — February 20, 2009 at 11:18 am

    taking 1-Dimensional to 4-Dimensional

  • sabalo — February 20, 2009 at 11:20 am

    The study of reducing data to insight through visual representation.

  • Ivan Ivanov — February 20, 2009 at 11:21 am

    DV uses multiple level data representations, combining numerics with visual heuristics to increase bandwidth and information throughput to the brain.

  • Omar — February 20, 2009 at 11:33 am

    Data visualization is the art of turning data into information.

  • Visio Guy — February 20, 2009 at 11:54 am

    Data visualization is the right brain’s scratch for the left brain’s itch.

  • justin — February 20, 2009 at 11:56 am

    Data visualization tells a story to the eyes, text only speaks to the ears.

  • Pavan — February 20, 2009 at 11:59 am

    If given just a couple of seconds, what would be the best way to digest a load of info? Thats where DV comes in- it gives a snapshot of the data and numbers.. if a snapshot is so rich, imagine what studying the DV would take us to.. a comprehensive understanding that goes beyond numbers and makes exploring the unknowns behind those numbers easier..

    maybe I should have explained the above using a tag could? ;)

  • Jonathan — February 20, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    Getting an audience excited about statistics they otherwise wouldn’t be interested in.

  • Joe Mako — February 20, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    Data Visualization is the process of turning raw computer readable data into human readable information enabling informed decisions and providing insights.

  • Ashley — February 20, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    I’ve always liked to call it “information design” — it’s a little bit broader. But it focuses on all the ways that data can be manipulated in order to be better used by humans. Putting related data together for more cohesive understanding. Performing calculations that transform the data, and add meaning. Most of our information is taken in visually, hence “visualization.” But in our increasingly multimedia world, it might be short-sighted (heh) to focus only on the visual. Regardless of the input method, information needs designers just as buildings and consumer products do.

  • Hadley — February 20, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    Data visualization is the science of turning data into information (with partial credit to Omar ;)

  • Matt Tuley — February 20, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    They say a picture is worth a thousand words. What if you have more than a thousand words? What if you need to convey a million words? Or a billion words? Can a picture do it?

    Yes.

    That’s data visualization.

  • Rick — February 20, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    Data visualization done well sums up a deep understanding of complexity and makes it accessible quickly to a layperson.

  • Scott Willeke — February 20, 2009 at 2:08 pm

    Data visualization is the act of turning data into information you can comprehend.

  • Michael — February 20, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    Compressing information into pictures.

  • Steve — February 20, 2009 at 2:32 pm

    Data Visualization is “Statistical Powerpoint(TM) for the masses”(TM)

  • James Dickey — February 20, 2009 at 3:02 pm

    Data visualization is a conversion of data into information in a way that prompts new understanding.

  • Paul — February 20, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    Data Visualisation levers the brains ability to see and understand instantly visual information and is the quickest way of information transferr to a human (provided the right info is presented of course). A picture tells a thousand words. Data visualisation shows a thousand data points (give or take a few orders of magnitude), and your brain does most of the processing behind the scenes :)

  • Dan — February 20, 2009 at 3:23 pm

    Data Visualization challenges the idea of “form follows function” where the presentation of data can greatly alter the message it conveys. It is an art form!

  • Manonfire — February 20, 2009 at 3:50 pm

    Data Visualisation allows for complex ideas and results, to be displayed in manageable and informative way.

  • Michael O. — February 20, 2009 at 4:33 pm

    You got data? I make picture. You understand data!

  • Sam — February 20, 2009 at 4:36 pm

    Data : Visualization :: Flour : Cupcake

  • Cody — February 20, 2009 at 4:44 pm

    Data visualization is actually cramming those thousand words into your picture… and making them into meaningful sentences.

  • jyamasaki — February 20, 2009 at 4:50 pm

    HAIKU

    visualize it /
    data comes, ideas flow /
    now, you know it all

  • Rodrigo — February 20, 2009 at 5:00 pm

    Just in it for the prize.

  • Eddie — February 20, 2009 at 5:14 pm

    making the complex or hidden accessible to the visual cortex

  • Craig — February 20, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Data Visualisation is Information Esthetics

  • Doug Fullerton — February 20, 2009 at 5:15 pm

    Data visualization – To combine a strong visual appeal with the effective presentation of information.

  • Jack — February 20, 2009 at 5:40 pm

    Data Visualization is taking the quantitative and giving it qualitative dimensions.

  • Matthew — February 20, 2009 at 6:21 pm

    Data visualization is recruiting more of the brain in the task of understanding data.

  • 9.2.5 — February 20, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    A usually graphical approach to understanding relationships within your data.

  • Chris Pounds — February 20, 2009 at 6:48 pm

    Data visualization is the exploration of information through the visual media. It can be as complicated as heat diagrams of singular value decompositions or as simple as a stem-and-whiskers plot of test scores for a class. The image itself tells a tale about the underlying data.

  • Tyler — February 20, 2009 at 6:57 pm

    Data visualization is taking something important and incomprehensible, and making it not only understandable, but also in many cases, aesthetically pleasing and fun to send to your friends.

  • Marc — February 20, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    Data visualisation presents data in a way that gives the reader more information than simple tables and graphs

  • Michael Galloy — February 20, 2009 at 7:59 pm

    Data visualization is the technique of creating displays which use of the human eye to aid in the understanding of complex datasets.

  • Peter — February 20, 2009 at 9:12 pm

    Data Visualization is explaining something quantative about a thesis or analysis in an intuitive manner

  • Valeria — February 20, 2009 at 11:50 pm

    @Nathan – :) yes its slightly modified from:

    https://flowingdata.com/about/

  • Tim — February 21, 2009 at 5:32 am

    data visulisation is about living in australia when competitions run in the USA timezone.

  • Lee Garland — February 21, 2009 at 8:20 am

    Data visualisation is ‘making the incomprehensable comprehensable’