This flowchart shows you what to say during private time with your special friend. Say goodbye to confusion and hello to deep conversations. Start from the middle of the chart and work your way out. Never again will you be at a loss for words.
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I was exchanging email with Rob a few days ago, and he brought up that I might see a slight boost in traffic from Australia because he had spread the word (thanks!) at a statistics conference. I immediately went over to Google Analytics, and indeed, there was an increase in traffic from the land down under.
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Mashups have been around for a while now, but for the most part have required at least a little bit of web development. Maybe it’s a line of javascript or thousands. Mozilla Labs, with the Ubiquity plugin, aims to make mashup-making accessible so that everyone can view data how they want everywhere on the Web. Use natural language like “map this” to stick a map into your email or get Craigslist offerings out of the list and onto a map.

For version 0.1, the application looks interesting. Check out the demo (or even install the plugin yourself):

[Thanks Colin and Jodi]

Nike+ is a device you hook up to your shoe and iPod Nano to track your running patterns and receive feedback while you’re running. Already a million people around the world have been training with the device, with the U.S. putting up 2.4 million global training miles. This past Sunday was “the day the world stopped to run” in the Nike+ Human Race 10K.
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Last month, FlowingData had a pretty good month moving up to rank 4,130 on Technorati and growing from about 4,000 subscribers to 4,500, so our community has grown a bit. Thank you to all of you who have been spreading the word!

In case you missed them, here are some of the best posts from August:

• Watch the Rise of Gasoline Retail Prices, 1993 – 2008
• It’s Like Google Maps with Sim City 2000 – OnionMap
• Map of Olympic Medals in Bubble + Geographic Form
• Britain From Above – Beautiful Use of Satellite Technology
• Visualize Genomes and Genomic Data – Circos
• Beginner’s Guide to FlowingData – A Guided Tour
• Is There a Market for Premium Online Data Visualization?
• Awesome Olympics Coverage By The New York Times
• Many Eyes Adds Wordle to its Extensive Visualization Toolbox
• 3 Worthwhile Alternatives to the Pie Chart

Stamen has taken a step towards the concrete with their recent Hurricane Tracker for MSNBC. From what I can tell, it updates every couple of hours or so. The tracker shows where Hurricane Gustav has been and where it’s headed and provides information on wind speed, ground speed, and location.

From the map we see a development from tropical depression in the Caribbean Sea, to a big category 4 over Pinar Del Rio, and then something between a category 3 and 2 as it moves over New Orleans. Gustav dwindles to a tropical storm as it moves towards Dallas. With mandatory evacuations of New Orleans starting yesterday, here’s to hoping everyone finds somewhere safe to stay.

Some will find this amusing while others won’t get it at all. If you don’t get it, consider yourself lucky. Have a good weekend, everyone.

[Thanks, Canna]

I used to ride my bike to school, and I always forgot my U-lock. Instead of riding back for it, I’d just stash my bike unlocked in between a cluster of bikes. I told my friend jokingly, “It’ll be OK. 98% of people are good.” One day I got out of class, and my bike was stolen.

I was cleaning up some Actionscript in preparation for a tutorial post on how to make your own animated Walmart map, but a couple of bad memories involving stolen code and bad knockoffs (of my work) stopped me midway. I had to think:

Is releasing my code the best thing to do?

I’m sure the consensus is a resounding yes, but what’s to stop some lazy person from ripping off my code and pawning it off (or worse, selling it) as their own? What if I want to sell my visualizations? I am after all a lowly graduate student. It’d be nice to have another income stream.

On the other hand, had others before me not released their work under that wonderful BSD license, I would not be able to do what I do. At least not as easily. Modest Maps? Free. TweenFilterLite? Free. Flare Visualization Toolkit? Free. If I don’t follow suit, does that make me selfish? Yes, it does.

Giving Back to the Community

I’ve heard that phrase, giving back, so many times in both the real-life sense and the digital one, but it never made much sense to me. I mean, I got it, but I never really got it.

Perhaps I never understood it, because I wasn’t using much of the community’s resources nor did I have anything to give back. I have something to give back now. I can help people learn in the same way that others before me have and still do. I’m incredibly thankful to those who maintain these open source projects and still help me out from time to time when there’s really nothing in it for them.

The least I can do is continue to promote this idea of openness and help this small field of data visualization flourish into what it deserves to be. It’s why I blog, and it’s why I should give back, but to what extent?

Making the Case for Open Source Data Visualization

My dilemma brought me back to a Data Evolution post on open source data visualization. It highlighted three things:

1. Open Tools – As in freely available software tools like R and Processing.
2. Open Code – How often have you seen a visualization and wondered, “How did they do that? If only the code were available.”
3. Open Data – Oh so important in data visualization. The core. Open data means more people can try out different methods.

It’s not always possible to attain all three. For example, we pay money for software because the companies would not exist otherwise. It’s a business, and to think that software companies would develop a bunch of free software is unrealistic. Also, oftentimes, data just can’t be shared – usually because of privacy issues. Lastly, open code doesn’t make sense a lot of the time. The DE post grades The New York Times with a D for openness, but they’re a news business, not a visualization repository.

While we can’t always attain all of three things, there’s no reason why we can’t try to strive towards that ideal. As someone I know likes to say – strive for perfection. You might not reach that standard, but you could end up with something close.

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

Tweeting Thoughts

I of course tweeted this in the middle of the night while watching the day’s remaining olympic events – to release code or not to release code. Here are are some of the replies:

@rpj: To release, always! (When legally possible.)

@ehrenc: re: code. You could always release half the code :)

@pims to release code. There’s some brilliant people around that can build on top of what you did. Open world :)

As for me, well, let’s just say you should expect to see tutorials – complete with code – in the coming weeks.

Keep track of what’s getting reported about the presidential race in somewhat realtime with perspctv. It’s a nicely done news dasboard that updates on its own showing updates from CNN, Twitter, and the Blogosphere. It also shows poll results, predictions, daily reach, and search volume.

They’ve got charts (above); they’ve got maps:

they’ve got timelines:

and they’ve got widgets:

In essence, it’s a news aggregater, but it’s a really good one and a great dashboard for you election junkies.

[Thanks, Iman]

As some commented on an earlier post, FusionCharts provides an easy way for people to hack together statistical graphics – sometimes not so attractively – and put the results on their websites. Widgenie serves as case in point. The concept of the application is all well and good. Upload some data and embed the “interactive” graphic on your blog, website, etc.

The realization of that idea however, needs some work. Aside from my difficulties logging on, changing my password, and non-flexible data upload, the widgets are, for the most part, just FusionCharts out of the box. Like the lollipop I made (below)?

[via ReadWriteWeb | Thanks, IA_chrissie]

I haven’t seen I.O.U.S.A. yet, but from the online bonus clips, it looks like it could be a good watch for you infographics junkies. The documentary examines the growing national debt and the consequences it will have on its citizens, so the source material sort of lends itself to plummeting time series charts with dramatic flare.

Here’s one showing personal savings rate over time:

Deficits and social security over time:

Debt-to-GDP projections:

A $53 Trillion Federal Financial Hole:

Those are just the bonus clips. I’m sure there are plenty more in the actual documentary.

[Thanks, @samkim]

A quick announcement – I just wanted to remind everyone (and point out to new readers) that there’s just one week left until the end of our summer project on personal visualization. I admittedly haven’t done a very good job of motivating all of you to this, but if you’d like a chance to win, submit by the end of September 1. Eternal glory is at stake.

GOOD Magazine, in collaboration with Graham Roberts, maps the most famous journeys in history – some fiction, some non-fiction. Wanderlust includes trips like Around the World in 80 Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth to the voyages of Marco Polo and Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight. However, it’s not just a map with journey lines on it; Wanderlust is a history lesson. Select a trip for a summary and explore highlights of the journey.

“Analytics, at the end of the day, is going to be the endgame.” Ok, MC Hammer. If you say it is, then I will believe you. Have a nice weekend everyone, and remember, despite what you’ve heard, you’re never too legit to quit.

[via Juice Analytics]

I’m not sure how old this Disney org chart is, but I’m guessing very. Ink and paint? What are those? In any case, it’s amusing. Why are nurse, army coordinator, police, and morgue on there? The animation business is clearly more complex than I thought.

Fleshmap is a new project by Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Vi̩gas that explores human desire from three points of view Рtouch, look, and listen.
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Speaking of physical graphs, looks it’s time management with my favorite childhood pastime – LEGOs! Each row represents an hour and each color indicates a different project. I’m gonna go out by myself a big, red bucket of LEGOs now.

[via infosthetics]

These wooden graphs by Joshua Callaghan show uh, something on the left and military spending on the right. While I wouldn’t call them any type of spectacular representation of data, I do like the idea of placing data into a physical space. We always get our graphs on a computer screen or on paper at best, which can take the human out of the data. It’s easy to forget that a single data point can represent an entire human life (or death). Keep that in mind the next time you analyze a dataset.

[via designboom | Thanks, Guðmundur]

I hope you’ll consider joining me on Blog Action Day on October 15 this year. It’s a day for bloggers around the world to all discuss one topic to raise awareness where attention is needed. Last year, 20,000 bloggers took part to discuss the environment. This year’s topic is poverty, and of course, we should all know by now that data visualization can play a huge role in showing that.

A while back I asked what you wanted to see more of on FlowingData. Thanks to the 447 of you who responded.

I was actually kind of surprised that there were so many votes for statistical visualization. I thought there would be more of a balance between design, art viz, and stat viz. I was, however, happy to see that the second most voted-on choice was “All of the Above.” I must be doing something right! So by popular demand, here’s some statistical visualization.

Pie Chart Alternatives

Since the above pie chart is making some of you cringe in agony (although I can’t imagine why), let’s take a look a few alternatives for the pie chart using the same poll results.

Bar Chart

How about a horizontal bar chart? The results are sorted and you can easily see the difference in voting counts.

Stacked Bar Chart

The above bar chart is missing a little something though. It doesn’t explicitly show that each bar is really a part of a whole – in this case, all the people who voted. How about a stacked bar chart then? It shows the groupings and is a little easier to read than the pie chart in the sense that it’s linear differences as opposed to radial.

Bubble Chart

Let’s not forget our friends the bubbles. Carrying the same “problems” as a pie chart, the bubbles on the left are essentially a table with some flavor.

Personally, I still like the pie. Which one do you think is best? Or is there something else that might have been better than the above? How about a mosaic plot? Donut graph? A plain table?