Researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden have found that the iPhone records cell tower access, and hence your location, in an easy-to-read file that is transferred as you switch devices. And they do this whether you like it or not.

The more fundamental problem is that Apple are collecting this information at all. Cell-phone providers collect similar data almost inevitably as part of their operations, but it’s kept behind their firewall. It normally requires a court order to gain access to it, whereas this is available to anyone who can get their hands on your phone or computer.

Allan and Warden provide an open-source application, iPhone Tracker, that maps that data. The good news is that the data doesn’t seem go to be anywhere other than your own backups and devices. Privacy concerns aside, this kind of makes me wish I had an iPhone; although I suspect my map would be painfully boring.

[iPhone Tracker via Marco]

When you first come across a Twitter account it can be hard to know if you want to follow that person or organization, based on the most recent tweets. Jeff Clark’s Tweet Topic Explorer gives you a quick view of that. Enter a username, and you get a clustered cloud of bubbles. Larger bubbles indicate topics that are tweeted more often and topics that are closely correlated (that is, appear together often) are colored the same.

Above is the view for @flowingdata. As you’d expect, data is in the center, and it branches out from there.
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In an op-ed for CNN and perhaps adding fuel to the fire, Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viegas, leaders of Google’s Big Picture project, talk visualization and its future.

In reference to rules of simplicity and the data-to-ink ratio derived from works such as that of William Cleveland and Robert McGill:

The single-minded pursuit of clarity and precision led to designs that were, sure enough, clear and precise. Grid lines receded discreetly into the background; Tufte’s beloved beiges and tans became standard recommendations.

However, is there something more? Using Hans Rosling’s widely-viewed TED talk as an example:

Was animation really the most precise way to show the data? Probably not, but the motion, color, and energy helped capture the imagination of millions of viewers across the world.

Finally, Viegas and Wattenberg end with:

Emotions and a strong voice aren’t necessarily sins in other media, and they shouldn’t be in visualization, either. By recognizing that being expressive and engaging doesn’t mean giving up clarity, we will have fulfilled the promise of visualization.

It’s common to look at data through a factual lens, where all meaning and insight is quantitative. This fits well in many settings, but there are other stories to tell that are personal and even moving.

[CNN via @infosthetics]

Dorothy Gambrell of very small array charts median Tomatometer ratings of the top 10 grossing films, since 1950. From the graph it looks like movies are getting worse, but are they really? This goes back to a similar argument from a couple of months ago. The decline is probably more of an indicator of reviewers, viewers, movie types, and ease of watching than it is of a drop in quality.

[very small array]

DisplayCabinet is a clever use of a projected display and RFID tags to take data away from the computer screen an into the physical world.
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Business intelligence expert Stephen Few goes on another rant about information graphics — mainly about the work of David McCandless, designer of The Visual Miscellaneum. Few’s post is in response to another from Teradata marketing director Mario Bonardo, praising innovation and new ideas, etc for business intelligence.
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Don’t you just hate it when you’re pleasantly driving around in the city and you’re suddenly enveloped by a giant pie chart in the road? Such a downer.
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Designer Patrick Smith has a minimalist look at mental disorders:

I was doing some research about mental health and I came across a list of mental disorders. I chose a few, starting with OCD, and set myself the challenge of defining each in a minimal style.

The OCD graphic is definitely the best one of the bunch. Others include agoraphobia, anorexia nervosa, and depression.

[Adapt & Graphic Patrick]

We’ve seen sorting algorithms visualized and auralized, but now it’s time to see them through the spirit of Hungarian folk dance. In a series of four videos (so far), folks at Sapientia University in Romania demonstrate how different sorting algorithms work with numbered people dancing around and arranging themselves from least to greatest.

See them in action in the video below. This one is for Bubble-sort. They move with such zest.
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Lovely imagery showing sugar consumption for day through lifetime. The average American consumes 45.3 pounds of sugar in a year. It’s a part of a read-later NYT article on the toxicity of sugar. Check out the similar pic for high fructose corn syrup. [via]

During production of the 2011 USAID annual letter from Rajiv Shah, someone said to someone else, “We need to make this more visually appealing. Let’s add some charts.” The problem was that there wasn’t much data to look at or report, and no one knew how to dig deeper. Plus — they had to sexify the letter in a hurry, so they settled for what’s there now.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to find the mistakes and to make suggestions on how to improve on what’s there. Some figures clearly have a few oddities while others simply could’ve been improved with better design choices. Here’s the letter and the same as a PDF. Can you figure out what’s going on? Leave your findings in the comments. Godspeed.

You’ve seen population changes at the state and county level, but with Census data, you can zoom in all the way to the block level. Stephen Von Worley breaks it down.
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Over the past four years there was a 43 percent increase in prescriptions for antidepressants. Some news outlets attribute this rise to the recession. People more depressed equals more drugs. Ben Goldacre of Bad Science explains why said outlets need to be more careful with their analyses.

From what I can tell, all the reports took an aggregate (the 43 percent) and then made a big assumption to explain it. I’m all for data journalism, but statistics is rarely that straightforward.

The MIT SENSEable City Lab presents five different perspectives of the ebb and flow in Singapore at the Singapore Art Museum.
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It’s xkcd on statistical significance. I need to stop eating all those green jelly beans.

I hear there’s also a link between sunshine and lollipops.

John Martz, in collaboration with Koyama Press, pixelates 235 Star Trek characters in this limited edition print. This amuses me even though I’ve never been a Star Trek fan. Must be those episodes of Next Generation I watched after school because there was nothing else on. Always had a soft spot for that Data fellow.

[Trexels via Boing Boing]

Natasha Singer for The New York Times starts the article on visualization and design with: “In an uncharted world of boundless data, information designers are our new navigators.” Uh oh, I thought, another aesthetic-heavy piece on hot numbers. But then Singer continues:

They are computer scientists, statisticians, graphic designers, producers and cartographers who map entire oceans of data and turn them into innovative visual displays, like rich graphs and charts, that help both companies and consumers cut through the clutter. These gurus of visual analytics are making interactive data synonymous with attractive data.

I can get on board with that. Includes soundbites from Rosling, Shneiderman, and Rodenbeck.

[The New York Times]

Almost a year ago, the BBC aired the Beauty of Maps, but we Americans couldn’t watch it online. Well, now you can. The full documentary is available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube. The hour and a half film is broken up into 12 parts. They’ve actually been online since August of last year, but for some reason I’m just now hearing about it. Enjoy part one below.
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I feel like whenever I watch a British film, I see a Harry Potter wizard or witch in it. I guess I’m not imagining things. The Ragbag had a similar curiosity and graphed all the films with four or more wizards in it — all 24 of them.
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