The New York Times mapped ratings for members of Congress, as given by the NRA.

The National Rifle Association gives members of Congress a grade ranging from A to F that reflects their voting record on gun rights. But in response to the school shooting, some pro-gun Democrats have signaled an openness to new restrictions on guns, and the N.R.A. released a statement that said it was “prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”

A company grows, it shrinks, people come and go. Justin Matejka, a research scientist at Autodesk, visualized the changes for where he works.

The OrgOrgChart (Organic Organization Chart) project looks at the evolution of a company’s structure over time. A snapshot of the Autodesk organizational hierarchy was taken each day between May 2007 and June 2011, a span of 1498 days.

Each day the entire hierarchy of the company is constructed as a tree with each employee represented by a circle, and a line connecting each employee with his or her manager. Larger circles represent managers with more employees working under them. The tree is then laid out using a force-directed layout algorithm.

Each second in the animation is about one week of activity, and acquisitions are most obvious when big clumps of people join the company. The long-term changes are a little harder to see, because the branches in the network fade into the background. Recomputing the layout each week might be good for the next round.

[Thanks, Justin]

As a teaser for a larger project on diagrams, Jane Nisselson describes how they exist in the real world.

Diagrams are everywhere — from the established conventions of highway signs to the newly emerging visualizations appearing on social networking websites. Most people have a personal experience of diagrams whether drawing directions or figuring out how to operate a new computer. Yet very few people are familiar with how we read or construct diagrams.

This short film introduces the language of diagrams and their role in visual thinking and communication. As only a film can do, it reveals the vocabulary “in the wild” and in the context of making and using diagrams.

I’m looking forward to the rest if this is any indication of what’s to come.

From businesses to demographics, there’s data for just about anywhere you are. Sitegeist, a mobile application by the Sunlight Foundation, puts the sources into perspective.

Sitegeist is a mobile application that helps you to learn more about your surroundings in seconds. Drawing on publicly available information, the app presents solid data in a simple at-a-glance format to help you tap into the pulse of your location. From demographics about people and housing to the latest popular spots or weather, Sitegeist presents localized information visually so you can get back to enjoying the neighborhood. The application draws on free APIs such as the U.S. Census, Yelp! and others to showcase what’s possible with access to data.

Available for free on both Android and iPhone. Data just a flick and a scroll away. [Thanks, Nicko]

Thessaly La Force, with illustrator Jane Mount, recently published My Ideal Bookshelf, which is a look into the books that some people of interest, including Judd Apatow, Chuck Klosterman, and Tony Hawk, would like to have on their ideal bookshelf. La Force’s boyfriend took a more data-centric look at the collections.

In the network above, each node is a person who listed their ideal books, and connections represent people who named the same books. Those in the center of the network had more book similarities than those on the edges. For example, James Franco named a ton of books and as you might expect has a bunch of connections. [via @shiffman]

By now, everyone’s heard of Moneyball. Applying statistics to baseball to build the best team for the buck. Naturally, there’s a lot of interest these days in applying the same data-based philosophy to other sports. Jennifer Fewell and Dieter Armbruster used network analysis to model gameplay in basketball.

To analyze basketball plays, Fewell and Armbruster used a technique called network analysis, which turns teammates into nodes and exchanges — passes — into paths. From there, they created a flowchart of sorts that showed ball movement, mapping game progression pass by pass: Every time one player sent the ball to another, the flowchart lines accumulated, creating larger and larger and arrows.

Using data from the 2010 playoffs, Fewell and Armbruster’s team mapped the ball movement of every play. Using the most frequent transactions — the inbound pass to shot-on-basket — they analyzed the typical paths the ball took around the court.

The challenge with basketball is that play is continuous, whereas baseball events are discrete, so you can’t apply the same methods. But if you can model the game properly, you know where to optimize and areas that need work.

As 2013 nears, let the recaps, reviews, and best ofs begin. Twitter put up their 2012 year in review of top tweets, trends, and such, which is mostly pictures and lists, but in collaboration with Vizify, they also have a section to visualize your own tweets. Click on the “View year on Twitter” button in the top right. Here’s mine, for example. (Surprise, I mention maps, data, and charts often.)

It’s a word frequency chart that shows usage over the year. Scroll left to right or mouse over bubbles to see specific tweets. Mostly, it’s just fun to look back. [Thanks, Todd]

This one’s for you Game of Thrones fans and aficionados. Jerome Cukier visualized groups of people, from Lannisters to Starks, and kills throughout the books. Each circle represents a character and is sized by number of appearances. Color represents status, and connecting lines are killer-killee relationships (aw, so sweet). The best part is that this all plays out over time.