Visualization: Brief Intro in The Times

What kind of personnel expertise is needed to create all these cool visualizations? I need to watch for information about that. 

Here's a good introduction to visualization in the January 6 The New York Times; the piece is about visualization in general, and not just maps, notwithstanding the article's title. 

A Makeover for Maps

By QUENTIN HARDY

Like many designers, Eric Rodenbeck has had a long relationship with bar graphs and pie charts. He just thinks they are a little old school for today’s data-filled world.

Mr. Rodenbeck has experimented with animation, three-dimensional maps that show the height of buildings by color changes and a representation of how photos spread on Facebook that looks like ice crystals forming on a car window. He’s even tried to characterize in a graphic how people were communicating in back channels at business conferences, with the biggest talkers at the center of a series of circles.

He is, in short, trying to rethink how data is presented.

“It doesn’t work if it’s not moving,” said Mr. Rodenbeck, the head of Stamen Design, a San Francisco studio that Google, Facebook and Microsoft have all used for help in turning fast-paced digital information into easily understood images. “It doesn’t work if you can’t touch it.”

Nowadays, devices and people are unceasingly uploading all kinds of information about the economy, locations, weather and even what sweater makes them happy. With this flood of data, some believe traditional ways of displaying information do not work well anymore. So there is a demand for Mr. Rodenbeck’s sort of creative thinking about the humble pie chart.

Article continues at link. 

Visualization: Visualization.org's Best of 2013

This is an elegant presentation of this resource's best visualizations of the year. There are 23 total; here are my three favorites. (Click on the images to go to full versions.) 

Who Made the 2013 Inc. 5000? 

Climate Change, Global Warming and Related Topics in Guardian Articles of the Past Decade

Bolides

Visualizations: FlowingData's Best of 2013

(See also the tag, Visualization.) 

Year-end is a great time for best-ofs and trends for the coming year. Here, Nathan Yau, the principal of FlowingData -- probably the best site for visualization; "explores how statisticians, designers, data scientists, and others use analysis, visualization, and exploration to understand data and ourselves" (from About) -- picks his favorites of 2013. 

Data and visualization year in review, 2013

DECEMBER 16, 2013 

Visualization continues to mature and focus more on the data first than on novel designs and size. People improved on existing forms and got better at analysis. Readerships seemed to be more ready and eager to explore more data at a time. Fewer spam graphics landed in my inbox.

So all in all, 2013 was a pretty good year for data and visualization. Let's have a look back.

There were several themes throughout the year, but the most important was the strengthened connection between data and reality. During some phases, when so much news was based on speculation and opinion, data was a way to form our own opinions and to view a subject more objectively. But not in that cold, robotic sort of way and more in the warm, human-like way.

Article continues at link above. 

Here are three of my favorites; click on images to go to sources. 

". . . not long after the shootings in Newtown, Periscopic shed light on U.S. gun deaths with an interactive animation. We saw plenty of charts that showed annual aggregates, but Periscopic brought the individual lives and what was lost back into the picture."

"I gravitate towards the more data-centric features, so I really liked the dissection of movie trailers by Shan Carter, Amanda Cox, and Mike Bostock." [The New York Times consistently has good visualizations.\

"The two most popular posts this year on FlowingData speak highly about America's interests, I think. The first looked at pizza chains across the country. The second looked at porn searches by state. Go America!"

Data Visualization: Ten Examples

Browsing good (and bad) examples is an important approach to designing a visualization for your data. See also this tag.

Via Mashable, a gallery to "10 Fascinating Data Visualization Progrects." Here are a few of my favorites; click on images to get to source visualizations.

Facebook Photo-Sharing Explosions

Google Flu Trends (a canonical early example of data visualization) 

Data Visualization: Healthcare

From the 2013 Data Science Summit via visualizing.org, some selected visualizations regarding health. 

Navigate at an embedded visualization below, and see the links above for more. 

Flow of Cancer Statistics 

Share of Food Products in Daily Diet

Visualization Hospital Price Data