Tag Archives: information visualization

12/2/16

Physical trace on map from GPS track data

gps trackWith more and more people carrying personal tracking devices, a wealth of personal information is being collected that can be visualized or physicalized in different ways. The geospatial data that all of our phones – and more and more watches – collect is particularly amenable to rendering into physicalizations.

Below is a model of the path I took a few months ago as I ran a few errands around my home on Aquidneck Island. I made two stops and intentionally took a route that formed a loop with no overlapping segments. Continue reading →

11/23/15

Three days – 4,000 Years

Stolen Years

The statistics on gun violence in this country are heart breaking. Guns killed 11,419 people in 2013. This represents a loss of over 500,000 years of life. Unfortunately, the rate of gun violence continues unchecked. This topic never loses its timeliness. Three Days – 4,000 Years is an adaptation of the powerful U.S. Gun Deaths visualization the data design firm Periscopic created a few years ago in response to the school shooting in Newtown CT. Continue reading →

10/30/15

Elevation map of sea surface temperature shows Gulf Stream

Here is ansnapshot00other 3D map. This one shows differences in sea surface temperature (SST) along the East Coast of the U.S. The elevation differences highlights the Gulf Stream, a surface current that flows north along the western edge of the North Atlantic, transporting warm water northward from the tropics.

 

Continue reading →

09/1/15

Napoleon’s march in 3d

minard1xI’ve been thinking about creating a 3D model of Minard’s famous chart depicting Napoleon’s 1812 invasion of Russia for quite a while. I finally gave it a shot over the weekend.

I could not be happier with the results. The first person I showed the model to said that she never really understood what Minard’s chart was showing until she saw it in 3D. Continue reading →

08/31/15

More Wave Interferences Models

DSC_0078 The wave interference models I shared a few months ago followed two dimensional waves over time. (x and z axes represented space and the y axis represented time. As an extension of this work, I’ve started creating models of interaction patterns formed by circular waves.

The models in this post are snapshots showing interaction pattern formed by two longitudinal waves propagating over time.

Continue reading →

06/30/15

Physical representation of a record breaking month of rain

AHPSMaypptdiffAccording to NOAA, this past May was the wettest month on record for the the US. The distribution of rain was not uniform. Parts of the central US received 2 to 3 times as much rain as usual while precipitation on the most of the East and West coasts was below average. Continue reading →

07/24/14

The challenge of using area to communicate values in visualizations

Bubble charts are a popular way to present quantitative data. Often the area of the circles in the bubble chart are used to encode the value of a parameter. The larger the value, the greater the area, the bigger the circle. This makes intuitive sense and can be quite effective for rough comparisons. However, it is important to understand that we are not very good at estimating area and  these representations distorts the data because we are not very good at estimating area.
Continue reading →

02/16/14

Visualization pyramid scheme

The Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom (DIKW) pyramid is often invoked to describe the value of information visualization. The suggestion is that by properly processing, sorting, and encoding ‘data’, it can move up a value pyramid from mere data to information (which is data made useful). Then, through some additional magical processes this information can become knowledge and ultimately contribute to wisdom.

While this description of the process of creating value from data has rhetorical charm, it does not stand up to close inspection. The problems comes from the fact that the meaning of the terms data, information, knowledge and wisdom are not consistent with their usage in this pyramid scheme. Continue reading →