I See What You Mean

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...

A headline from the Guardian About a year ago, University of Huddersfield design student Dave Bowker created Designing the News, a six-part series of data graphics depicting one week's worth of information from and about the Guardian . (It earned him a First .) The methods used in each piece focus on a specific goal of presentation, including the ranking of information, categorisation, colour coordination, illustration, graphing of complex data, and relationship tracking. The purpose of the project is to present the news in a way that people wouldn't usually experience it. This is done by attracting the viewers with beautiful graphics, and then holding their attention with a deeper investigation into the information they see everyday. The rundown of images and approaches can be seen here . Of the various formats and approaches, I think Thursday and Saturday are the most successful. Friday , unfortunately, turns into a blur at 20 paces, while I find Wednesday somewhat hard ...