The Making of Data Visualization

8/4/2015

The Making of Data Visualization

When talking about making a data visualization, many people picture someone at a computer working with data, graphics, and charts. Yet, the actual creation can contain a lot more work. For Óscar Corvera , an Infographic Artist for La Prensa Gráfica , his approach is journalistic and described in the Life of a Graphic . When an early morning shooting left several dead in San Salvador, El Salvador, Corvera went to the site to interview witnesses and police officers as well as sketch the scene.

Infographic Artist for La Prensa Gráfica

He records everything including the location of other cars and trees. He then laid the crime out, step by step, and coordinated it with the version from the article. After the initial data visualization, Corvera continued his research, gaining access to the car where the people were shot. He counted bullet holes and locations, also including the positions of occupants. The resulting data visualization led his editors to assign a reporter to do a follow-up article. The second graphic received an Award of Excellence from the Society of News Design.

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Visualizing Data Connections behind the next President

7/20/2015

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Visualizing Data Connections behind the next President

The New York Times created an interactive data visualization, Connecting the Dots Behind the 2016 Presidential Candidates , to help readers understand the people behind the candidates in the 2016 presidential election. The introduction explains that although the candidates change, often the people behind the campaigns do not. Visualizing data in this way, allows the reader to get a comprehensive look at who is where and where they have been in the past. The visualization begins with Hillary Rodham Clinton who by far has the most connections. Her network is broken into Clinton loyalists, Obama operative, pro-Clinton super PAC, and other key strategists.

Viewers can hover over circles to highlight the connections or see who belongs to which group by selecting a box at the top of her visualization.

The caption explains that the size of the circle is proportional to the number of people in each group. Campaigns are darker and administrations along with other organizations are lighter.

The interactive’s way of visualizing data allows the reader to make connections, literally, that they may not have made otherwise. Besides Hillary Clinton, candidates include Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker. The New York Times has several other ways of visualizing data regarding the election including information on candidates’ backgrounds, who is running verse who is not, and who has the campaign money.

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What is data visualization and is it important?

7/14/2015

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What is data visualization and is it important?

Presenting data in a visual form such as a chart, graph or picture is SAS Institute’s definition of data visualization. The analytics software and service company’s What is data visualization web page explains that human brains process charts and graphs faster than spreadsheets or reports. Yet, many still find charts and graphs boring. Enter interactive data visualization offering more details and changing the ways data is viewed. Users can click on parts of the visual to find more information and remain interested.

Data visualization is important because it often allows people to see things which were not apparent before they viewed the data in a visual presentation. Patterns emerge that are not as visible on a spreadsheet and the data can be consolidated regardless of the amount.

SAS does offer advice for generating the best data visualization possible. One tip is to know your audience and how your audience processes information. Second, understand the data and what you want to communicate. Third, choose the best but simplest form to convey your visual information.

All that is great for a business but what is data visualization for the average Joe? If the data exists, it can be made visual whether for use or entertainment. WebdesignerDepot .com offers 50 Great Examples of Data Visualization , including some of the data visualization tools that create them. For example, Narratives 2.0 creates music visualization.

Tag Galaxy allows the user to search Flickr tags and view all images via a globe graphic. Viewers can see a larger version by clicking on a picture.

Visualizing the Bible provide a visual representation of 63,000 textual cross-references in the Bible. It is more for its attractive appearance and is not interactive.

Finally, Visual Complexity is a collection of visualizations categorized and ready for viewing. For example, one contributor created a summary of his son, daughter, cat and his own movements through their living room over one hour in 2008.

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Interactive explains YOLO flip step-by-step

7/14/2015

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Interactive explains YOLO flip step-by-step

To help fans understand gold medal winning snowboarder Iouri Padladtchikov’s YOLO flip during the 2014 Winter Olympics Games in Sochi an interactive data visualization was created in a collaborative effort between the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , a Swiss newspaper, and +Datavisualization.ch. The finished data visualization was used in the E-book You Only Fly Once published by the paper but its creation is broken down in the article, Interactively Explore the YOLO Flip .

The data visualization tool starts by helping the reader understanding the halfpipe itself using a Swiss train to present an idea of the size and length of the platform, essentially a 22 foot high, 66 foot wide and 591 foot long snow and iced covered ramp.

The reader then can see three aspects of the YOLO flip broken into tricks known as the Backside Air (style), a Frontside 900 (twist), and a Frontside Double Cork 1080 (flip).

Next, the reader sees ghosted key frame overview of the jump. By hovering the cursor over an image, the reader is shown movements taking place as well as the real-time video image. The real time data visualization gives the reader a feel for the jump as they move from image to image or by viewing the original video.

The creators started with a mix of three separately designed screens including an introduction for the visualization tool, a video and an interactive. Yet, the three did not seem right separately so they were combined into one full interactive. Using the SensorLog iPhone app to send information to their computer, they discovered the pitch, roll and yaw by collecting gyroscope data through holding their iPhones to mimic the Russian born Swiss snowboarder’s position. The data had to be adjusted slightly to provide a better visual match so it is close but not perfect.

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World Flags Analysis Visualization Tool

6/5/2015

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World Flags Analysis Visualization Tool

Not strictly a quantitative data analytics tool, but a fascinating interactive report by an Indian data visualization company Gramener . It is set up to provide visual insights into color distribution and dominance on the flags of 196 countries around the world. This visualization tool displays a map which is colored based on dominant colors of the countries.

You have an option to change from the map to a flag view which is a list of countries with corresponding percentages of color prevalence on respective flags. Gramener developers also included a set of filters which offer the ability to highlight different continents, countries by a specific dominant color, flag symbols, shapes etc.

On the top of the report a scrollbar allows switching between preset highlights on several groups of country flags. For example, by selecting one of the preset highlight boxes you may learn that the flags of Romania and Chad are identical.

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