Institute for Analytic Journalism

Could World of Warcraft be the new War and Peace?

analyticjournalism — 2009-10-02T15:18:00-06:00

From the Nieman Foundation "Storyboard":

Could World of Warcraft be the new War and Peace?

Whether Pacman or Halo first introduced you to video games, calling them “high art” might stretch the sensibilities. But boardwalk nickelodeons led to movies like The Godfather—could a similarly radical transformation be underway with games?

Narrative journalism draws many of its core principles from novels, films, and short stories. Elements like character development, scene-setting, and a narrative arc work whether the tale is true or made up.

Games, however, are different.

“There are characters and stories in games, just like there are ...

Vintage Infographics From the 1930s

analyticjournalism — 2009-09-11T17:41:00-06:00

Nathan, over at FlowingData, has posted a fine example of infographics. The work of Willard C. Brinton is a nice extension of what was being done by U.S. government agencies. Turns out, Brinton's book can be found in used book sites, and at an affordable price.

Vintage Infographics From the 1930s

Posted by Nathan / Sep 11, 2009 to Infographics / 8 comments

Someone needs to get me a paper copy of Willard Cope Brinton's Graphic Presentation (1939), because it is awesome.

Brinton discusses various forms of graphic presentation in the 524-page book and what works and what doesn't. There's also some good stuff in there about how to make your graphs, charts, maps, etc (by hand).

Have we seen these?

The most interesting part is that many of the graphics - despite having no computers in 1939 - look a lot like what we have today. Albeit, they're a little rougher because they're made by hand, but that's just added flavor.

For example, you've got the Sankey diagram above, or a "cosmograph" as Brinton calls it. The instructions read:

One thousand strips of paper are set on edge to represent 100% and are separated into component parts of 100%.

What? You want me to arrange 1,000 strips of paper to make my diagram? Brilliant, I say.

Here are your choropleth maps...

network diagram...

and of course some of your usual suspects...

The entire book is freely available in PDF format, but it's low resolution and takes forever to browse. Michael Stoll has posted some higher quality shots on Flickr.

I still want more though.

Seriously, does anyone know where I can get a copy?

[via Datavisualization.ch]

Like what you see? Subscribe to the FlowingData RSS feed to stay updated on what's new in data visualization.

Some nifty Unemployment Charts from Jorge Camoes

analyticjournalism — 2009-06-19T15:45:00-06:00

Jorge Camoes is one of the serious folks when it comes to dataviz. Here's some work he's done recently in U.S. unemployment data. Note especially the good state-by-state dashboard. It quickly shows New Mexico is hangin' in there.

Charts: Monthly Unemployment Rates by State 1976-2009

by Jorge Camoes on June 18, 2009

Here are two ways to display a relatively large dataset, montly unemployment rates by state since 1976. The first one is perfect to see the overall patterns, the range from the lowest to the highest, the outliers and the slopes. An interactive version would allow the user to highlight specific series.

A small-multiple version allows the user to focus on specific states, compare them to the normal band, etc. States are ranked by labor force size and, as you can see, in the first row seven out of ten are above the US average in April. In the last row, only one is above the US average. You can also see that Michigan was not well (unemployment-wire) long before the current crisis, or a spike in Luisiana (Katrina). It pays to study this chart carefully.

Bottom line: try to see the same data from different angles. There will always be semething interesting to find.

What do you think? How would you improve these charts? Would you use a different display? Share it in the comments! (here is the data file)

Update: I usually stay away from Excel’s surface charts, but I’d like to add this one:

Also check Michael’s Horizon chart.

From products to services, services to products

analyticjournalism — 2009-06-11T10:24:00-06:00

Interesting discussion of, fundamentally, how the Digital Revolution drives the flow from products to services and services to products. Ergo, touches on much of what is at the core of SFComplex. See.... The New Negroponte Switch -- "Designing things that think they are services, and services that think they are things". Matt Jones presentation gushing with great ideas for the "Web Meets World" change. I love the evolving printed map they made for the British Council at Salone di Mobile. A five course meal with port and insulin shots for thought.

The JavaScript InfoVis

analyticjournalism — 2009-06-06T14:10:00-06:00

An interesting beginning for a potentially valuable and interesting tool....

"Javascript Infoviz Toolkit -- Treemaps, Radial Layouts, HyperTrees/Graphs, SpaceTree-like Layouts, and more.in this Javascript suite for building data pretties. Higher-level than processing.js. (via O'Reilly Radar and chrisblizzard on Twitter)

Features

Multiple Data Representations
Treemaps, Radial Layouts, HyperTrees/Graphs, SpaceTree-like Layouts, and more...
Major Browsers Support
IE6+, Firefox2+, Safari3+, Opera9.5+
Open Source
Licensed under the BSD License
Library Agnostic
You may use the JIT with your favorite DOM manipulation framework
Extensible
All visualization classes are mutable, so you can easily add/override any method you want.
Composable
Visualizations can be combined in order to create new visualization methods."

Good Magazine Inforgraphics archive

analyticjournalism — 2009-06-03T14:19:00-06:00

Good magazine often produces informative and innovative infographics. Eighty of those works are now on Flickr. Be sure to drill down into the thumbnails to see the work in detail. Go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodmagazine/sets/72157618896371005/

GOOD Magazine · Sets

Slideshow

[?]

GOOD Transparencies Archive

Thumbnails Detail 2 comments

An archive of Transparencies that have run in past issues of GOOD and on our blog.

We post a new Transparency every Tuesday on www.good.is/

80 photos | 43,395 views

items are from between 04 Apr 2008 & 02 Jun 2009.

New levels of data aggregation

analyticjournalism — 2009-06-02T11:37:00-06:00

We've been noticing since the first of the year the results of some very creative and sometime brilliant aggregation sites. (Do we need a new phrase for this format?) These sites are richer than Google mash-ups in that they allow far more control by the user. Some, like Mint.com or TripIt.com, also require various degrees of data entry by the user, sometimes with with a surprising degree of detail, both personal and specific. Mapumental, below, pushes the limits of this evolution.

mySociety blog » Say hello to Mapumental

By Tom Steinberg on Monday, June 1st, 2009

We’ve been hinting for a while about a secret project that we’re working on, and today I’m pleased to be able to take the wraps off Mapumental. It’s currently in Private Beta but invites are starting to flow out.

Built with support from Channel 4’s 4IP programme, Mapumental is the culmination of an ambition mySociety has had for some time - to take the nation’s bus, train, tram, tube and boat timetables and turn them into a service that does vastly more than imagined by traditional journey planners.

In its first iteration it’s specially tuned to help you work out where else you might live if you want an easy commute to work.

Francis Irving, the genius who made it all work, will post on the immense technical challenge overcome, soon. My thanks go massively to him; to Stamen, for their lovely UI, and to Matthew, for being brilliant as always.

Words don’t really do Mapumental justice, so please just watch the video :) Update: Now available here in HD too

Also new: We’ve just set up a TheyWorkForYou Patrons pledge to help support the growth and improvement of that site. I can neither confirm nor deny that pledgees might get invites more quickly than otherwise ;)

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 9:20am and is filed under Launches, News, Travel Time Maps. Follow responses to this entry (RSS2 feed).

Open Source Data Visualization Framework - Axiis

analyticjournalism — 2009-05-23T13:53:00-06:00

Yet again, Nathan at FlowingData corrals a good application tool/tip....

Open Source Data Visualization Framework - Axiis

Posted by Nathan / May 22, 2009 to Software, Statistical Visualization / 6 comments

Axiis, an open source data visualization framework in Flex, was released a few days ago under an MIT license. I haven't done much in Flex, but from what I hear, it's relatively easy to pick up. You get a lot of bang out of a few lines of code. Axiis makes things even easier, and provides visualization outside the built in Flex graph packages.

Axiis gives developers the ability to expressively define their data visualizations through concise and intuitive markup. Axiis has been designed with a specific focus on elegant code, where your code can be just as beautiful as your visual output.

Above is the wedge stack graph. Here's your standard area graphs:

See what other visualizations you can create with Axiis here.

"Interaction Design Pilot Year Churns Out Great Student Projects"

analyticjournalism — 2009-05-08T18:19:00-06:00

Another interesting post from "FlowingData"

"Interaction Design Pilot Year Churns Out Great Student Projects

In a collaborative initiative between Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and The Danish Design School, the Interaction Design Pilot Year brings together students and faculty from various disciplines for a unique brand of education.

The Interaction Design Pilot Year is a full-time intense curriculum that includes a number of skills-based modules (such as video prototyping and computational design), followed by in-depth investigations in to graphical/tangible interfaces and service design.

The end result? A lot of great work from some talented and motivated students. There are a number of project modules, but naturally, I'm most drawn to the interactive data visualization projects. Here are a few of the projects.

>Find much more in the student gallery."

Designing for Big Data

analyticjournalism — 2009-04-29T12:49:00-06:00

Much of this is well-known by those of us who have worked with dataviz for the past decade or two, but his ending conclusions are solid and worth reviewing.

Key quote from Jeffrey Veen: "We need to create tools to help people manipulate THEIR data."

Good examples of how to use large data sets to find and tell stories and, if desired, to answer YOUR questions about the data.

Video: Designing for Big Data

This is a 20-minute talk I gave at the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. In it, I describe two trends: how we're shifting as a culture from consumers to participants, and how technology has enabled massive amounts of data to be recorded, stored, and analyzed. Putting those things together has resulted in some fascinating innovations that echo data visualization work that's been happening for centuries.

I've given this talk a few times now, but this particular delivery really went well. Only having 20 minutes forced me to really stay focus, and the large audience was very engaged. I'll be giving an extended version of this talk in June at the UX London conference, with a deeper look at how we integrated design and research while I was at Google.

http://www.veen.com/jeff/archives/001000.html