Gundega Strautmane, a Latvian textile artist and designer, visualizes social and physical networks in a show called Relational Ornaments. The networks are created using various sized pins to depict nodes and threads connecting them to show relationships. Bringing visualization into the tactile world lends it a weight not able to be achieved on a computer screen. It allows the viewer to pause, spend time with the information, feel it, sense it in a more holistic way. The placement of pins and threads is imprecise because they are placed by hand giving the work a very natural, organic feel rather than the rigidity of the exact calculations of programming.

[via The Network Thinkers]

This Wall Street Journal graphic shows who’s selling (or sold) a percentage of their Facebook stocks and who’s holding steady.

This graphic is the perfect example of why I’m a proponent of the pie chart. First, they stuck to two values per pie chart. That makes it easy to read. Next, they used the size of the pie to denote the number of shares. Finally, they used small multiples to easily compare both the shares owned by each entity as well as change in percentage of shares being sold.

I’m sure bar charts would be fine too, but WSJ really used all aspects of the pie chart very effectively.

[via Barry Ritholtz]

Washington Post’s Ezra Klein busts on the filibuster. Gone are the days of Mr. Smith when invoking the filibuster was seen to serve a greater purpose. The filibuster has its roots in Ancient Rome, and apparently even then it had its critics.

This chart is a great example of providing a lot of information in a concise area. All of these data points are relevant to the topic and helps us inform our opinion about the matter.

[via @hfairfield]

The New York Times does it again with this succinct look at tech IPOs. It begins with looking at everything through the lens of when Google’s IPO in 2004, which, at the time, was considered huge. The next screen adds Facebook to the mix which dwarfs everything prior. It continues on to show the first day of trading pop and where things landed long term (3 years post-IPO).

It’s a very interesting view of IPOs and could actually be a good financial analysis tool with a few more features.

Help is a drug company that offers you less. Less active ingredients, less waste, less confusion, less greed. Its tongue-in-cheek website has a map of its latest sales data called “What’s wrong U.S.?” A bar chart for each state shows how many people are buying products for particular maladies.

So why are the inner northwest states having problems sleeping? My guess they’re up late worrying about gay marriage.

Garbage in, garbage out the old adage goes. Nigel Hawkes, Director of Straight Statistics, describes a sort of statistical whistleblowing letter to the British Medical Journal.

A team from Imperial College found that in 2009-10, nearly 20,000 adults were coded as having attended paediatric outpatient services, and 3,000 patients under 19 were apparently treated in geriatric clinics. Even more striking, between 15,000 and 20,000 men have been admitted to obstetric wards each year since 2003, and almost 10,000 to gynaecology wards.

It’s hard to put your faith in analysis, visualization, policy, and anything else that comes out of data with reports like these. With human error being a known issue, we have to find better ways of inputting and double-checking data. Unfortunate mistakes at the outset only lead to bigger problems down the line.

The unassuming little Descriptive Camera made me rethink data. This project by Matt Richardson was on display at the ITP Spring Show. The basic premise is that you take a photo and the camera spits out a textual description of what it sees. The results are remarkably accurate, detailed, and humorous.
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What is Missing? by Maya Lin seeks to raise awareness about the mass extinction of species. It has a beautiful interface. The world map is black on a sea of black. Your mouse acts as a sort of flashlight layered between land and water, showing you glimpses of familiar coastlines and allowing you to select dots that tell the stories of extinction.
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