Data visualization

I'm testing data visualization software (and ideas) for a faculty member working on a project about real estate values and public school systems.  I have a couple of examples I made of visualizations of Connecticut housing data using Tableau Public here and here.  Of course, with Tableau Public, you have to worry about the stability of the cloud, so for this particular project, I'm not sure whether this will do. 

But I'm a big fan of Jon Udell (and Hans Rosling) and so I would make the argument that creating screencasts in which the author of data visualization narrates the data are going to be useful for those who would rather sit back and listen.  These days, the free tools with which you can make screencasts are endless, but I prefer Screencast-o-matic.  The interface looks clunky, but works like a dream.  (Read this review of 12 screencasting tools if you want to try something else).  With Screencast-o-matic, you can export your screencast as an mp4 (like here), allowing you to preserve whatever (possibly) unstable data visualizations you have created while simultaneously supplementing the visualization with a soundtrack.

Second attempt at a Google motion chart

Well, the quality isn't very good (very fuzzy), but the chart is much better than the last one I made. They data are time series data on faculty salaries against college tuition costs from 2000 to 2009. For some reason the html to embed the actual graph on this blog aren't work. Still, take a look:

Trinity thesis student's thesis is online

Devlin Hughes' thesis on the creation of the Smart Choices website is now online here. If you haven't read this yet, or if you don't know anything about Smart Choices, you should check it out. This thesis brings so many things together: digital and educational divide issues, data visualization, mapping, and website design.

Data about myself talking about data

I've signed up for a beta account with Daytum, a new website that is contributing to the trend in what Kevin Kelly refers to as the quantified self. Check out my numbers!

Note that these kinds of sites are proliferating all over the place. You can keep track of your sexual relationships, your finances, your companies salaries, your menstrual period, and the symptoms and medications associated with your disease.

Using Wordle to compare library strategic plans

The first is from Carleton College's library. The second is from Trinity

What to do?

Trying to figure out what kind of chart to make? First, you have to figure out what you are trying to show (in other words, as one of my advisers used to say, "what kind of story do you want to tell?"). Try Juice Analytics' chart chooser. It gives you suggested as to what kind of chart you want and then provides you Excel templates in order to pull it off!

Data visualization with Many Eyes

This from a student who just played with Many Eyes...

Data place

Check out data place to learn how you can create scatterplots using Census data! Data place also has a mapping tool that does not quite beat Social Explorer, but gets pretty close

Even more on data visualization

We might not think of baby names as "data," but they sure are! I would love to teach a class using this mash-up of baby-name data. Students could read the chapter on names from Freakonomics and all of Stanley Lieberson's A Matter of Taste.

Excel hack

Like a lot of people, I think, I don't particular like the chart functions in Excel. But this Excel hack is so cool, and quite easy to do. My first attempt at doing this took about five minutes (see image to the right).

What is additional cool is that you can use the "conditional formatting" tool in Excel if you would want to make bars of a certain length different colors. I tried to color code the bars in my table by whether they were above or below the mean. Couldn't quite get it to work, but I'm still trying...

Data visualization

Seems like the hottest thing in the data world is using Web 2.0 technologies to allow the average user to visualize data. A number of sites allow users to upload data sets and experiment with the visual presentation of them. Try:

• Swivel
• Data360
• Many Eyes

Also, try reading some of the reviews of these sites here and here. It's worth noting that these sites seem to be coming out of the Edward-Tufte tradition. If you're into Tufte, you might want to check out the website devoted to sparklines and think about buying this.

Minding the gap

Gapminder may be one of the coolest new teaching tools around. Use it to quickly show scatterplots, where each point is a different country plotted on three dimensions (two are whatever you would like: mortality, income, education, etc., and the third is time). These plots are interacting and show the shape of cross-national human development over time...