April 2010
6 posts
Reading Response the last
So here we are at last. What happens next with this blog, I wonder? I’ve been giving it some thought, but I’ll leave that for another post.
For the moment, we’re discussing text visualization. There is a meta-visualization element inherent to text visualization, since text is, after all, already a symbolic representation. If you go back far enough in human history, to...
Reading Response 8
The common question in the readings for this week was how to deal with too much data. This is a more and more common problem in our information society, especially in the field of security where critical information is often hidden beneath piles of random noise. Our natural abilities to visually identify patterns is ideally suited toward this problem, but we still need to find a way to present...
March 2010
8 posts
Reading Response 7
The papers this week reminded me of why I hated freshman bio. The vast amount of classification data is the sort of thing that is usually learned through extensive rote memorization which must be constantly updated as genetic family trees are arranged and rearrange in the presence of new data. In short, this is a topic that my natural instinct tells me to run away from as fast as I possibly...
Reading Response 6
Slate.com recently had an article on how hand-drawn maps are in many ways superior to more ‘accurate’ graphics. Steven Few’s introduction to geographic mapping makes essentially the same point: When there is an abundance of information, including it all merely serves to obscure the important bits. If I need to get the the dry cleaners four blocks away (and I do, at the moment,...
Audio Charts →
h/t J-Train
Olympic finishes ‘visualized’ using audio. It’s shockingly effective in evoking relative differences and absolute times. I feel like this could have broader applications.
Hand-drawn maps-AKA what the experts miss. →
Manyeyes is down...
…so this response is going out sans supporting graphics. Pity.
As a (very) former physics major, the idea of creating dynamically stable, information carrying systems based on simple physical rules is, to use the appropriate word, sexy. The spring modeling of connections outlined in this weeks papers is fascinating, and leads to groupings that are both visually interesting and...
February 2010
27 posts
Conway →
I couldn’t get embedding to work, so here is a link. Click and drag to make your own graph. Then hit any key to have some fun. Hold the spacebar to accelerate.
Reading Response 5
This week in medical visualizations…
I can’t make any claim to understand the the full implications of real time, detailed visualization in medicine, but the x-ray specs certainly seem to show promise, at least on the high-end party favor circuit. Though the computing power and finesse was awe inspiring, I was left with an impression, perhaps unfairly, that even the creators of the...
The Financial Crisis (part deux) →
I have seen so many graphs comparing the current crisis to previous ones. It’s amazing how the choice of economic indicator, be it % S&P losses, total Dow losses, jobs lost (either % or total) etc. can really change the story being told. The interactivity, simplicity, and diverse information provided by this NYT graph make it a very nice visualization. Normalizing all the axis in...
Reading Response 4
As with any art or science, one of the best ways to learn what works and what does not is to trace its history. For 900 years humans have been making graphical representations with various degrees of success, and for all of our time and technology we have not really done substantially better than Playfair’s time series from the early 1800’s. Certainly we can do more now, more data,...
The sky is falling! →
A map of interconnected risks.
WatchInformation as art.
Source.
MOMA blew my mind
This weekend I spent about an hour admiring four data visualizations currently on display at the New York Museum of Modern art. To the best of my knowledge, all were created using Processing.
A description of the exhibit can be found on this pdf. (under ‘visualizations’)
See Wikipedia articles edited over time.
Watch a super computer think o chess moves.
Ahhh forget it. Just...
Reading Response 3
Effective visualization is more than putting together a nifty bar chart. And while all the spangles and doodads that allow us to display truly prodigious amounts of data in an accessible manner, they can often lead us to lose sight of what we are actually trying to do: communicate. If the end user of the representation can’t easily find the information they need in the graphic all then all...
Visualizing Relief
Some Tableau-enabled charts of international aid pouring into Haiti.
What color is Peace?
This graph and this website are both pretty amazing. Natural color associations with words and concepts are something that any graphic designer should keep in mind.
Manyeyes is addictive
I put together census data of the number of graduating BAs by different field from 1980-2005. It’s fun to play around with a bit. Note especially the rise and fall of communications technology and computer science.
Check it out here.
January 2010
40 posts
A second response
Like many things, this blog has a purpose, though it is a purpose that is only secondary to its point. To whit:
It is perhaps worth adopting as a rule of thumb that if a data visualization takes ten pages of text to explain it’s not doing its job. This paper has some really fascinating ideas about how to display complex data in a way that allows the viewer to preform the sorts of visual...
