Data Visualization

Data Visualization Mindy McAdams October 2008

What is “a great story”?
Convinces us of something
Makes us question our assumptions
Compels us to action
Enlightens us, brings a new realization
Touches us, connects to our humanity

Great data visualization tells a great story.

Finding the story in data
Data can be boring -- if you don’t know what you’re looking for
In raw form, numbers and words lack meaning
A dataset is a bucket full of numbers
“ There are stories in that bucket”
(--Nathan Yau, Flowing Data )

nytimes.com

Data visualization tools create a picture that makes clear what the numbers mean .

usatoday.com

Visualizations allow us to understand and process enormous amounts of information quickly because it is all represented in a single image or animation. 7 Things You Should Know About Data Visualization

nytimes.com Movie box office revenues, January 1986 to February 2008. Vertical shows weekly revenue amount. Horizontal shows how long the movie ran in theaters.

Data visualization includes:
Design
Organization
Fact checking
Sleuthing
Research
--Nathan Yau, Flowing Data

Data visualization is the graphical representation of information.

Common types of data viz:
Maps
Show patterns that occur in geographic space
Bar charts
Show simple numerical comparisons
Line graphs
Show continuous change over time
Pie charts
Show proportional differences
See: Visualization Options Available in Many Eyes

Map shows all public schools in Washington, D.C. washingtonpost.com

Map shows all schools where at least 60 percent of students passed the 2006 D.C. math exam. washingtonpost.com

washingtonpost.com Bar chart: U.S. service members killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, 2001-2006.

nytimes.com Line graph compares time progression of present crisis with average of all past crises and with five worst worst crises (July 18, 2008)

Pie chart: FeedBurner.com stats showing which RSS readers send traffic to the blog Teaching Online Journalism

usatoday.com Pie chart: “Cuteness factor” may make it harder to read at a glance. Is this chart showing number of parents? Or where parents look?

Word cloud shows 150 words used most by Joe Biden in his speech at the Democratic National Convention, 2008. Size of word indicates number of times uttered. graphicdesignr.net

Word cloud shows 150 words used most by Sarah Palin in her speech at the Republican National Convention, 2008. Size of word indicates number of times uttered. graphicdesignr.net

How to approach data viz:
What kind of story are you trying to tell? Is it a report, or is it a novel?
Do you want to convince people that something is necessary?
Think character development:
Every data point has a story behind it, the same way that every character in a book has a past, present, and future.
There are interactions and relationships between those data points. It’s up to you to find them.
--Nathan Yau, Flowing Data

Data Visualization Mindy McAdams / October 2008 Resources used for this presentation include Great Data Visualization Tells a Great Story , by Nathan Yau, and 7 Things You Should Know About Data Visualization

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Data Visualization

by Mindy McAdams on Oct 28, 2008

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Data Visualization — Presentation Transcript