Data Visualization

Joseph RyanITS Research Computing

November 8, 2012

On the agenda.

1. The “magic” hypothesis.

2. Three common goals.

3. How to get started.

4. Visualization tools for the web.

Goals

Successful visualizations depend on you

• And your audience

• And your goal(s) for your visualization

A Path

Who? What? Should?

• Who is my audience?

• Experts?

• Students?

• General public?

• What do I want to tell them?

• Space or time relationship?

• Multivariate system?

• Does this message belong in a visualization?

Ben Fry: How to Get Started

• Get some data.

• Organize and structure the data.

• Remove unnecessary(!) data.

• Use statistical methods to discover patterns.

• Choose a visualization style.

• http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html

• Refine.

• Build interaction, if appropriate and possible.

Tools

Visualization Playgrounds

• Many Eyes

• http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/

• OpenData

• http://opendata.socrata.com/

• ChartsBin

• http://chartsbin.com/graph

http://code.google.com/apis/chart/interactive/docs/gallery.html

Google Chart API

D3.jshttp://d3js.org/

Summing Up

• Make sure data visualization is the right tool for the job

• Define audience, information to communicate first

• Choose a visualization

• Existing examples in knowledge area?

• Data to support this visualization?

• Tools and expertise to create it?

• Have fun

• Try breaking some rules

• Ask someone outside of your area for feedback!

Thank you!

Joseph Ryan

ITS Research Computing

ryanjd@email.unc.edu

Ben Fry’s excellent Visualizing Data provided

significant intellectual content to this presentation.