When I first got in to graduate school, I really had no idea what I was getting in to. I thought it’d be like undergraduate studies, but harder. Not really. You definitely do a lot more unguided, independent work. You don’t have someone telling you what to do, so it’s up to you to figure out what you need to read and what you want to work on.

This illustrated guide to a PhD from computer science professor Matthew Might sums it up nicely.

By the end of high school, you know a little bit, by the end of a bachelor’s degree you start to specialize, and towards the end of a PhD, you’ve made it to the edge of human knowledge in a very small area of all there is to know in the world. Your job is to push that edge out some by the time you finish.

It’s all so clear to me now.

[Thanks, Max]

Add another toy to Stamen’s bag of tricks. The recently launched prettymaps by Aaron Straup Cope uses shapefiles from Flickr, urban areas from Natural Earth, and road, highway, and path data form OpenStreetMap, for an interactive map that’s well, pretty.
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I’m late on this, but remember that volcano eruption in Iceland a few months back, and all the European airports had to shut down because of the giant ash cloud? DataMarket mapped the Iceland earthquakes in 2010, leading up to the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull.

This visualization shows earthquake activity leading up to eruptions in Eyjafjallajökull in South-Iceland in March and April 2010.

Each bubble represents a measured earthquake and the size of the bubble represents its magnitude. Deeper earthquakes are represented with darker colrs while shallow earthquakes are brighter. An earthquake slowly fades out as time passes. Yellow stars indicate eruptions.

Like you’d expect, it’s a stagnant in the beginning, then rumble, rumble, and boom. Eruption. Watch it unfold in the clip below.
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“1945-1998” by Isao Hashimoto – Nuclear explosions conducted around the world between, um, 1945 and 1998. A counter on the top keeps track of explosions in each country. [thx, bernd]

Wikipedia’s Lamest Edit Wars – David McCandless looks at some petty back and forth. Rectangles represent documents, and are sized by number of edits.

Mood on Twitter – Cartograms representing mood on Twitter over time. Highest level of happy is early morning and late night. Not sure what measure of happiness is though. [thx, sune]

Radiolab and NPR Present Words – Beautiful video from the always entertaining and informative Radiolab. Similar to Moments.

I used this diagram to convince my wife to marry me (j/k).

Buy the print by Nick Schmitz here. Have a good weekend!

[via swissmiss]

Update: Sheldon Comics has a slightly different take.

Carl Richards, a financial planner and a regular on The New York Times’ Bucks blog, uses graphs and diagrams to explain personal finance. And as you know, sketches are always twice as charming when they are on the back of a napkin. Together, the collection provides sound financial advice, so that you don’t end up poor and bankrupt, chasing the next Google or investing in entertainment.

[via Chart Porn]

My wife is an ER doc, so I hear about this sort of stuff all the time. Hospitals are going all-digital, and the exchange of data from doctor to doctor, from hospital to hospital, from patient to doctor, and doctor to patient is only going to get easier.

This expedited exchange of information will bring advantages such as fewer prescription errors, easier hospital transfers, and through sensors and mobile devices, professional health practitioners will be able to provide better care to those with chronic health conditions. This illustration from Chris Luongo explains a bit more.

Naturally, with all these benefits come plenty of challenges. Data privacy is huge here. Can you imagine if your medical charts ended up in some random hacker’s hands and then sold to the highest bidder? At least we might get more useful spam. I want big discounts on mis-spelled drugs that I actually need.

Seriously though. Data is blowing up, and there’s going to be monster demand for data scientists in the next ten years. See that wagon? Better jump on it while there’s still room.

[via Smarter Planet]

I should just automatically bring the OkTrends feed into FlowingData. In their never-ending quest to understand humankind, the group from online dating site OkCupid analyzes 11.4 million opinions on what makes a “great” photo – as in makes people want to date you. Some of the findings include: photos from Panasonic Micro 4/3s were best received, “photo attractiveness” decreased by age, and the Flash adds seven years.

There’s one finding that’s got everyone buzzing though. iPhone users have more sexual partners. See the graph above and below for the numbers.
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Martin Wattenberg, who with his associate Fernanda Viégas, was just snatched up by Google, talks data and visualization in a lecture at MIT. For the most part, he focuses on past projects, which I am sure you’ve seen. However, even if you have seen all of Martin and Fernanda’s work, it’s still worth a watch as he highlights the interesting tidbits that each tool or piece can reveal. The rundown makes you appreciate the work that much more, in the same way you appreciate art when you know the story behind the picture.

The great thing about Martin and Fernanda is that they’re able to switch back and forth between art and science, which in turn gains the respect of the academic visualization world and attention from the masses.

Watch the full keynote below. It’s on the longish side, at about an hour, so you might want to bookmark it for later.
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I’m still not comfortable sharing my location with strangers, and my friends are all really low-tech, so FourSquare has never appealed to me. But if you are an avid FourSquare user, you’ll like this one. Geo startup, Movity, built Weeplaces over the weekend. It’s a simple idea to visualize your movements via FourSquare check-ins.
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There’s a lot of history behind the New York City subway map, but despite all the revisions, people (especially out-of-towners) still find it hard to navigate the underground. Designer Eddie Jabbour took his frustrations and put that energy towards a heavy redesign. After the MTA rejected it, he put it up in the Apple Store as KickMap, so that people could at least make use of his map on their iPhone. So far, a quarter of a million of people have downloaded it.
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Alex Rodriguez became only the seventh player in MLB history to hit 600 home runs, at a younger age than any of the previous six by far. Amanda Cox and Kevin Quealy of The New York Times visualize home run counts for Rodriguez and other big hitters. It’s similar to the graphic NYT designed when Barry Bonds passed Hank Aaron back in 2007, except with this new one, you can sort the home run lines by season or by age.
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A simple question from GOOD magazine: where did the money to rebuild Iraq go? In 2003, the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) was established for the benefit of the country’s people. The Department of Defense (DoD) managed that money. According to a report [pdf] from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction:

Weaknesses in DoD’s financial and management controls left it unable to properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in DFI funds it received for reconstruction activities in Iraq. This situation occurred because most DoD organizations receiving DFI funds did not establish the required Department of the Treasury accounts and no DoD organization was designated as the executive agent for managing the use of DFI funds. The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss.

That’s 96% of 9.1 billion dollars that we apparently have no clue about how it was spent. What?

[Thanks, Elise]

Here’s another timeline of Inception from deviantArt user, dehas. This one has the kicks in it. Start on the bottom left, and follow the character lines counter-clockwise. Lines end as characters die off in each level.
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You know I can never resist a good Back to the Future reference. Also from graphic designer Sean Mort, the trilogy timelines are displayed in parallel. Important events from each year are marked, starting at the original flick up top and moving down to the lesser, but still great, Western finale.

This flowchart from Watermark Design helps you decide if you need a new logo. Oddly enough all paths lead to Watermark’s logo design services. That is unless you think designers have no concept of reality and scream when someone tells you art is important to business, and you happen to be an international spy. Hm, interesting. [via]

Online dating site OkCupid continues with amusing yet thorough analysis of their 1.51 million users. This time around, they cover the lies people tell:

People do everything they can in their OkCupid profiles to make themselves seem awesome, and surely many of our users genuinely are. But it’s very hard for the casual browser to tell truth from fiction. With our behind-the-scenes perspective, we’re able to shed some light on some typical claims and the likely realities behind them.

Among the findings:

• People exaggerate their height by about two inches.
• If someone says they make $100k per year, they probably mean $80k.
• The more attractive a picture, the older it is.
• Most self-identified bisexuals (80%) only like one gender.

Buyer beware.

Leading up to their book, Turning Pages: Editorial Design for Print Media, publisher Gestalten has a chat with Steve Duenes and Archie Tse — of famed New York Times graphics department — about what goes on behind the scenes.
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When street view came out on all the the popular online map applications, we thought it was awesome. We were able to see photos of the actual buildings and people walking on the street. It’s especially handy when you’re looking for something in a brand new area. Street Slide from Microsoft Research is the next iteration of that.
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You knew this was coming. I’d call spoiler alert for those who haven’t seen Inception yet, but honestly, this flowchart from graphic designer Sean Mort will just confuse you anyways. If, however, you’ve been fortunate enough to see the mind roller coaster of a film already, Mort’s chart makes perfect sense and might clarify any confusion. Levels and dreamers are labeled accordingly. I think the line for Cobb to Limbo should start at Level 4 though.

[via datavis]

Update: Sean provides a revised version after seeing the movie for the third time.