IV and the news: Iran election data

As thousands and perhaps millions take to the streets in Tehran to protest Iran's (alleged) election fraud, the UK's Guardian goes nitty-gritty, posting a data set of polling results.*

The paper ends its report thus: "Can you do something with this data? Please post us your visualisations and mash-ups below or mail us at datastore@guardian.co.uk ."

Its story also links to data maps from Fivethirtyeight.com and Iran Tracker. (Elsewhere at Fivethirtyeight, Nate Silver considers the statistical analysis that ostensibly proves the election was rigged -- in other words, the basis of the protestors' unrest.)

Here's the direct link to the election data, in case anyone out there feels like having a go at it; I hope I'll have some time to muck around with it myself.

DATA: Full Iranian election results by province including turnouts and 2005 results. Download them as a spreadsheet.

*Per the story: "The figures we've uploaded are, as far as we can work out, the official totals, so you should be safe using them." Take that as you will. Note also that if you read Farsi, you can get the stats straight from the mullah's mouth here.

UPDATE ON THE DATA (UPDATA?): Pollster runs a roundup of news items in which people point out that certain aspects of the official election stats are, er, unlikely to occur naturally. No infographics, but lots of interesting analysis nonetheless.

Business Week on Tufte: "Invisible Yet Ubiquitous Influence"

Along with Fast Company (and me), Business Week asserts that good information graphics and info design have business value. An admiring profile of Edward Tufte — with accompanying slide show, natch — is featured in BW's recent "Voices of Innovation" package:

Next to a bad example of a graph, he positions a sublimely clear treatment, often using the same data. Simple as it sounds, the effect has proved to be riveting for a generation of nonprofessional designers. Tufte's work is relevant to anyone who needs to write or present information clearly, from business executives to students.  

In dismantling some of the worst habits of two-dimensional design, he has framed new analytical terms that flicker through many design conservations [sic]*.

* Conventions? Conversations? Or something else? And, more important, have any readers out there recently had a "design conversation" at work? (Media folks, you're DQ'd, sorry.) Do tell.

I want to be Jorge Camoes when I grow up.

Portuguese infoviz enthusiast Jorge Camoes has spent the last year and a half writing informed, insightful blog posts on the field, complete with examples and citations. To his credit, he approaches everything -- even the revered work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few -- with loving skepticism.

I'm gratified, too, that he seems to agree with me on one central point: Snazzy tools alone don't get you good data visualization. It all comes down to putting serious thought into the project before you plot the first data point.

In future posts we'll discuss more of Jorge's ideas. Bem feito, o Sr. Camoes!

IV on the march

The ever-astute Lorelei Brown hips us to the "astounding data visualization critiques" at Graphic Sociology. That's one for the blogroll.

Memorandum from the Synoptical Charts sysadmin

For readers with an interest in the nuts and bolts, here's a look at how we operate -- literally.

WORKING KIT FOR SYNOPTICAL CHARTS LLC

iMac 24" (OS X) - Big Mac
Acer Desktop (Windows Vista/Ubuntu Linux) -
Quarter Pounder
Dell Studio Laptop (Windows Vista) - Hamburger
Macbook Pro (OS X) - Cheeseburger
Macbook Air (OS X) - Filet o' Fish
Macbook (OS X) - McRib (retired)
Ubuntu Netbook (Ubuntu Netbook Remix) - Fries
XP Netbook (XP Home) - Milkshake

Software running:

Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint (Win/Mac)
Visio (Win)
OmniGraffle Pro (Mac)
NitroPDF Pro (Win)
PDFPen Pro (Mac)
Adobe Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop (Mac)
Adobe InDesign, Framemaker (Win)
Espresso (Mac)

Free and/or open-source apps (installed on all platforms)

OpenOffice
GIMP
Inkscape
Dia
Cyberduck (FTP/Mac)
Filezilla (FTP/Win)

We have a small flat aluminum case named To Go that holds our 3G USB modem, a 6ft length of Cat5, and a couple of USB drives with tools on them, including an Ubuntu boot disk on-a-stick that will boot every computer we own (srsly).

If one of us needs to be mobile-outside-known-WiFi-range for the day (increasingly frequent), we take a laptop or netbook and announce our intentions to take (e.g.) "Fries to go" for the day (or for the duration of a business trip).

I still travel with the Macbook Air, which is really a functional piece of modern sculpture; however, I am absolutely flabbergasted at how acceptable a $200 netbook running Ubuntu Network Remix is. For the price I paid for the Air, one could buy eight of them. Two netbooks for $200 each was the biggest bang-for-the-buck purchase I've made in 20+ years of buying computer gear for self and others.

We do online backups, so we have to leave machines on until those are complete. Now that we're doing incremental backups mostly, we can shut down our machines every night (good for both power conservation and security reasons) and run ultra-lite with just the netbooks on the weekend.

In fact, the hardware now seems more or less interchangeable. All the stuff we at SC create and refer to is stored on a remote server, with the local machine acting as a lens that allows us to find and focus on the items we want. Advantages:

• (Almost) infinite storage space!
  
  
• Data safety (even if, say, you are on a business trip to New York City and your beloved MacBook decides to implode)!
  
  
• Total mobility! (Since everything has been synced up and is now stored in the ether, anything we need can be downloaded to any machine we may happen to be using.)

My sysadmin does good work.

Infoviz for business: Fast Company points the way

Michael Cannell asks on the Fast Company blog (formerly mentioned here): "Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?" I'm figuring that's a rhetorical question, since the subhed reads: "As design work shifts to infrastructure and problem solving, sexy infographics are part of the new skill set." Of course we at Synoptical Charts couldn't agree more.

He goes on to discuss infoviz as a discipline and mentions its many applications and its immense potential:

If we're going to live in a world driven by data, the thinking goes, we need a simple means of digesting it all. We are increasingly a visual society, and our understanding of the world is increasingly made possible by this new visual language....

Designers have historically excelled at finding insightful ways of looking at complex problems. Visualization will likely play a prominent role as design evolves beyond the consumer economy (selling $2,000 poufs and other high-end furnishings) and helps create efficient new forms of buildings, food distribution and transportation.

Thanks for helping me get the word out, Michael.

(Hat tip: Margot.)

"Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?" -- FastCompany.com

Speaking of pie charts: the implications of GraphJam

The charts over at GraphJam aren't exactly data-heavy or rigorous, but they are often amusing:


Graph by weegee64, via the GraphJam builder.


Graph by oliver.wolf, via the GraphJam builder.

OK, I'm slightly biased here because for years and years I was a paid observer of pop culture (aka journalist), so naturally I appreciate the GraphJammers' mockery of rock songs and movies.

But this stuff pleases me on a professional level too: People who make charts and graphs out of heretofore unchartable (or at least uncharted) cultural artifacts show themselves to be comfortable with graphical renderings. They know how to create them and they know how to read them.

And that's nothing but good news for Synoptical Charts and our fellows in the infoviz biz. The more people speak our (visual) language, the more uses they will find for it, and the more they will eventually find themselves relying on it... I hope.