As we’ve seen, javascript is growing into a viable solution for visualization on the Web. John Resig ported Processing to javascript about a year ago and we saw some projects in javascript to show off speed in Google Chrome.
Most recently, Nicolas Garcia Belmonte released version 1.1 of his InfoVis Toolkit, which provides a basic set of tools for creating interactive visualizations on the Web. Read More
As we’ve all read by now, Google’s chief economist Hal Varian commented in January that the next sexy job in the next 10 years would be statisticians. Obviously, I whole-heartedly agree. Heck, I’d go a step further and say they’re sexy now – mentally and physically.
However, if you went on to read the rest of Varian’s interview, you’d know that by statisticians, he actually meant it as a general title for someone who is able to extract information from large datasets and then present something of use to non-data experts.
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You know all those infographics that you like so much from GOOD Magazine? Well they’re all in one place now in their Flickr archive. Head on over to view all 80.
[Thanks, Amrit]
We all know Twitter has taken on a life of its own. With the very open API, Twitter allows developers to create countless applications on top of the service, and the sheer number of users has opened up opportunities in the area of real-time search. Needless to say, Twitter has a lot of opportunities worth considering, and it’s possible the service could look very different a year from now (underneath the frontend) as more people adopt and bubbling acquisition rumors perhaps come to fruition. The below flow chart from Steve Rubel shows Twitter’s possible future while the above from Brian Solis and Jess3 shows all the spawns of Twitter data.
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This infographic from Wired explains how Living Machines work to combine waste management and a garden in an office lobby. Honestly, I’m posting this for one reason only. The title is Déjà Poo. Brilliant. Yes. I am that immature.
This infographic from Wired explains how Living Machines work to combine waste management and a garden in an office lobby. Honestly, I’m posting this for one reason only. The title is Déjà Poo. Brilliant. Yes. I am that immature.
[via Graphic Sociology]
This graphic on the history and future of information has been making the rounds. Several people sent it to me a while back, but it didn’t seem quite right, so I didn’t post it; however, this post from PZ Meyers compelled me to take another look. Meyers says:
Some days, I think other people must be aliens. Or I must be. For instance, there’s a lot of noise right now about this article analyzing the future of information and media that, if you read the comments, you will discover that people are praising to an astonishing degree. I looked at it and saw this graph [above graphic]. And my bullshit detector went insane. It’s supposed to be saying something about where people are and will be getting their information, but there’s no information about where this information came from, and it’s meaningless!
Yikes. Take out the boxing gloves. Looks like we’ve got another clash between the technical and the design-ish and mainstream crowds. The comments from both sides are also pretty interesting with one group saying how visually appealing and informative the graphic is with the other group criticizing the graphic for failing in every way.
Clearly the graphic is not based on any real data or metric. It goes off history and probably a lot of Wikipedia entries, and then shapes and sizes go off feeling. So as an analytical graph, it doesn’t work. But what about as an opinion in graph form? Does it work then? What do you think? Is this graphic a crime against all that is good in visualization or does it work for what it was trying to do?
[Thanks, Patrick]
It’s Friday. It’s summer. It’s time to relax in the backyard with an ice cold beer in hand. As you consume your beverage, here are 11 infographics about your beer, because the more you know, the more you enjoy. To start things off is a full history of beer (above). Read More
A large majority of us who have websites use Google Analytics as our traffic monitor, and why not? It’s free, it works, and it provides loads of data on traffic, referrals, and our content. We can then make decisions based on that data, but the trouble is there’s a fair amount of clicking before we get to the good stuff. Enter Dshbrd by DabbleDB. Yes, that’s dashboard with no vowels.
The DabbleDB folks know data, and Dshbrd is no exception. Using data from your Google Analytics account, Dshbrd analyzes and finds the points of interest – and then shows them to you in a clear and concise way. I’ve grown incredibly tired of overused sparklines, but Dshbrd uses them well to show traffic trends alongside a vertical stacked area chart. The two are linked such that when you scroll over an event (e.g. rise in referrals from Digg), the area on the stacked chart highlights and vice versa.
View traffic from site referrals, search engines, and direct links or content popularity, etc. Basically, you can examine all of your analytics data in Dshbrd that you can in Google Analytics but in this new view. It might take a second to get used to time on the vertical axis, but once you get over that, this alternative interface is quite intuitive and more importantly, very useful.
Now if only DabbleDB would provide a reliable API I would be very happy.
Ultimately, I’m guessing DabbleDB would want to turn Dshbrd into a fee-based service if it gained enough traction. I personally wouldn’t pay for it since I really don’t need that much outside the usual Google view, but I could see how Dshbrd could be useful to others. What do you think? Would you pay for this sort of premium view into your Google Analytics data?
In celebration of Barack Obama’s 100th day as the 44th President of the United States, the MIT SENSEable City Lab visualized mobile phone activity during the historic inauguration. What we see is a sense of the worldwide celebration and when and where people traveled to Washington, D.C. to get to the event. They call it Obama | One People. Read More
Axiis, an open source data visualization framework in Flex, was released a few days ago under an MIT license. I haven’t done much in Flex, but from what I hear, it’s relatively easy to pick up. You get a lot of bang out of a few lines of code. Axiis makes things even easier, and provides visualization outside the built in Flex graph packages. Read More
Big news. Data.gov is now live. Government data is at your fingertips.
The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
I was actually expecting an API of some sort, but it’s a searchable catalog that makes it easier to find the datasets scattered across all the U.S. agency sites. I still need to explore more to figure out what exactly is there, but this is big news for data fans. What do you think of the new site? Discuss in the comments below.
[via infosthetics]
Axis Maps recently released indieprojector, a new component to indiemapper, their in-development mapping project to “bring traditional cartography into the 21st century.” Indieprojector lets you import KML and shapefiles and easily reproject your data into a selection of popular map projections. No longer do you have to live within the bounds of a map that makes Greenland look the same size as Africa. Read More
Quick announcement: I’m offline for a couple of days to attend my sister’s graduation in California (congrats, sis!). Check out the FlowingData archives when you start going through data visualization withdraw. FlowingData will return to regularly scheduled programming on Thursday.
I know a lot of you are new to FlowingData, so here are some of the most popular posts from the past couple of months in case you missed them:
One thing you might have noticed about these top posts is that many of the topics were reader-suggested. Thanks to all of those who’ve sent me pointers via email and del.icio.us. Keep ’em coming. FlowingData would not be the same without you.
I always chuckle a little bit whenever I get an email from someone who thinks FlowingData is a big design firm. I’m totally flattered that it comes off that way. I mean, I must be doing something right. In reality though, I’m just one statistics graduate student working towards my PhD, so FlowingData wouldn’t be around today, if it weren’t for these generous sponsors (and the best readers around) who help FlowingData not suck.
NetCharts — Build business dashboards that turn data into actionable information with dynamic charts and graphs.
IDV Solutions — Create interactive, map-based, enterprise mashups in SharePoint.
InstantAtlas — Enables information analysts to create interactive maps to improve data visualization and enhance communication.
Tableau Software — Data exploration and visual analytics for understanding databases and spreadsheets that makes data analysis easy and fun.
Want to be a FlowingData sponsor? Get in touch, and I’ll send over the details.
With their usual flare, GOOD Magazine maps the death penalty around the world according to Amnesty International. Here we see that the philosophy varies quite a bit from country to country; however, most countries have either abolished the death penalty or only use it in exceptional cases. The death penalty is still in use in about 30 percent of countries. Like the map of drinking age though, I suspect laws vary within the countries. Read More
Pixel City is a procedurally-generated city by Shamus Young. For the non-coders out there, this essentially means that based on a certain set of rules, this 3-D city is generated dynamically each time the program runs. Here, the video that shows the Young’s process will make it more clear:
Check out the very detailed 10-part explanation for more on how Pixel City was built. Hopefully more comes out of it than just a screensaver. If it does become a screensaver though, I’d gladly use it.
Andrew Garcia Phillips and Stephen Grocer of The Wall Street Journal compare the financial health of 19 major banks according to recent government stress tests. Each row represents a metric, each bubble represents a bank, and the size of a bubble represents the value of a metric for that bank. Roll over bubbles for more information or select a specific bank in the left sidebar. I know a lot of you don’t like bubbles in your viz, but this one works for me.
[Thanks, Vikram]
Geographers from Kansas State University map the spatial distribution of the seven deadly sins in the United States. These types of maps are always kind of iffy as they draw from data from various sources gathered with different methods and usually use some kind of researcher-defined metric. Still interesting though… right?
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Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics
Available now.
