I See What You Mean

Increasingly, it seems, mass media outlets are talking up infoviz. Great news for us here at Synoptical Charts, but more than that, helpful for people in businesses that demand clear, concise and logical communication. In other words, everybody. Today's installment, from Forbes.com : ...[W]hile Hadoop may be the poster child of Big Data, there are other important technologies at play. In addition to Hadoop, the open source framework for distributing data processing across multiple nodes, these include massively parallel data warehouses “that deliver lightening [sic] fast data loading and real-time analytic capabilities,” as the report states; analytic platforms and applications that allow Data Scientists and business analysts to manipulate Big Data; and data visualization tools that bring insights from Big Data analysis alive for end-users. Big Data is Big Market & Big Business - $50 Billion Market by 2017

Alex Pareene, at Salon, for one: I can explain the magnitude of the federal debt pretty easily: The recession caused revenue to plummet, and tax rates have been very low for years. Plus wars. But I explained that with words. Who reads words? No one, unless those words have lines next to them, or colored bars. America's Deficit Chart Surplus -- Salon

Regular readers of this space may recall that I'm partial to tax-related infoviz . So imagine my excitement in coming across this beaut from the Washington Post : How the fight over tax breaks affects your bottom line Here in the US, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire soon, and the government has several possible courses of action. This graphic interactively depicts three scenarios, and the impact that each would have on the federal budget as well as the taxpayers'. Why it's great: Clean, spare, streamlined. The options are clearly delineated (via tabs) and the change in outcomes is evident and easy to understand. Needless details about taxpayer cohorts (homeownership, filing status, that sort of thing) are wisely avoided; the captions on the vertical axis provide the necessary macro context. The attractive tan-to-red color scheme/progression is subtle yet distinct; though the colors hang together to keep the graphic unified, each of the seven subsets is quite distinct....

On August 24 in Amsterdam the European Journalism Centre is running a conference called "Data-driven journalism: What is there to learn?" Oh, man. I hope the American journalists are listening in. Because there's a lot to learn, in both senses: 1) what patterns and insights can we get from the data, and 2) how can we better deploy the technology? Infoviz is finally gaining widespread renown as a storytelling technique/analysis tool, and I predict that publications will eventually need to use it if they aim to keep current readers and entice new ones. As a longtime journalist and infoviz evangelist, I've been looking forward to this convergence. It may sound corny, but I believe that when information is depicted clearly and intelligently, the graphical evidence really can help people understand the problems they share and point the way to new solutions. Communication breaks down all around us -- why not use as many effective techniques as possible?

In a New York Times op-ed back in May, Reason.com editor Nick Gillespie pondered the fiscal consequences of legalizing "victimless" crimes such as prostitution, gambling and drugs: [Here's a way to] help the federal and state governments fill their coffers: Legalize drugs and then tax sales of them. And while we’re at it, welcome all forms of gambling (rather than just the few currently and arbitrarily allowed) and let prostitution go legit too. All of these vices, involving billions of dollars and consenting adults, already take place. They just take place beyond the taxman’s reach... Turning America into a Sin City on a Hill could help President Obama pay for his ambitious plans to overhaul health care and invest in green energy. More taxed vices would certainly lead to significant new revenue streams at every level. Now the folks at nightlife site Sloshspot.com have taken some data from NORML and various U.S. government agencies and created this : Not bad, I think...

Created by a couple of UK computer science students, this newly upgraded aggregator/search engine delivers results that are both broad and deep. Tags are used extensively and to good effect, but the infoviz applications are where the action is. The Network widget is probably my favorite. To use, hover over a small graphic image to highlight its connections with other items in the network. Hover over bits of text for pop-ups providing additional information. Double-click a node if you want to drill down. If you're looking for news from a certain region, click the Hot Spots map widget and drill down from there. You can further refine the search by filtering the topic of the news stories. Unfortunately, the Trends app is buggy, poorly explained and therefore far less useful. And Silobreaker's collection of pre-set topics (global issues, tech, science, business, energy and world) is certainly incomplete. Even so, the site's dashboard-style interface provides lots of entry p...

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...

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.

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 furnis...

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.

SEED magazine's recent rundown of the pluses and minuses of charting is well worth a read, especially if you haven't spent hours and hours considering which graphical formats are most effective and why. To wit: Many psychoperceptual studies have explored the human mind’s aptitude for gleaning information from pictures. Unfortunately, the pie chart incorporates tasks that we humans systematically fail to perform accurately, all those exercises that come at the bottom of the hierarchy of perceptual tasks... So although we’re good at comparing linear distances along a scale — judging which of two lines is longer, a task used in bar graphs — and we’re even better at judging the position of points along a scale, pie charts don’t bring those skills to bear. They do ask us compare angles, but we tend to underestimate acute angles, overestimate obtuse angles, and take horizontally bisected angles as much larger than their vertical counterparts. The problems worsen when we’re asked to ...

San Diego digital artist Tim Schwartz tracked the prevalence of certain words in 158 years of the New York Times and then, rather than create animation or static graphs (too mainstream?), he used that data to power his amusingly retro Command Center (above). Check out those analog gauges and the LED time display! Even the biomorphic shape harks back to a low-tech era. Lovely work, Tim. Playful projects like this give me tremendous hope that soon data visualization will be understood, accepted and even adopted by average folks.

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 ...