Visualize Success

Each day more data exists than the day before. Data visualization helps makes sense of it all. I sift through the raft of data visualizations (which themselves float atop the river of data) to bring the best specimens to the fore.

[visualsuccess-blog]

Information is Beautiful created a word cloud that shows a consensus ranking of 'books everyone should read' based on a data scrape of over '15 notable book polls.'  It's a standard word cloud, so nothing too special here.  But it does give an at-a-glance rollup of the polls.  Not surprisingly, it reads like a high school English reading list.  The classics are classic for a reason.  Some good contemporary works here too, including Life of Pi and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay.

(via The Guardian)

[visualsuccess-blog]

Interview with New York Times Data Artist in Residence Jer Thorp. 

He builds his own software to create the visualizations, and echoes McLuhan when he says 'the art itself is the software.'

Thorp goes on to state: 'When I look at my own practice, I always look at the software I’m building as the result. People see images and video from my work, but I just consider them to be documentation of the work rather than the work itself.'

(via http://poptech.org/)

[visualsuccess-blog]

March Madness graphed

Leo Aranda plots the path of the 1-16 seeds through the NCAA men's basketball tournament since 1985.  It shows that, over time, the selection committee gets it right.  #1 seeds have won far more often than the rest, #2 seeds have won more than #3, and so on.  Only 3 times has any seed lower than a 3 won it all.

- Villanova (8 seed) in 1985, an epic Cinderella shocker

- Kansas (6 seed) in 1988 with Danny Manning, who had a ridiculous line in the final: 31 points, 18 rebounds, 5 steals and 2 blocked shots

- Arizona (4 seed) in 1997 with Mike Bibby, Jason Terry, and my least favorite college player ever, the ridiculously over-achieving Miles Simon (who somehow won MOP for the tourney).

[visualsuccess-blog]

Instability Index for the Middle East

The Economist calculates a weighted index for instability, which is part diagnostic and (potentially) part predictor.  Interestingly, the % of the population under age 25 is a more important predictor than the tenure of the current ruler, suggesting that the current pro-democracy unrest truly is a youth-driven movement.  The final ranking indicates Syria may be the next focal point of protest.   

[visualsuccess-blog]

UK Crime Maps.

This tool lets the user compare density of crime in different English and Welsh cities.  According to the Daily Mail, "It allows anyone in England and Wales to enter their postcode and find out police records of burglary, robbery, violence, vehicle crime and anti-social behaviour on their street during December 2010."  The maps have sparked somewhat of a controversy. That same article reports that some areas appear more crime-ridden then they actually are, because of faulty data collection.  For example, a quiet road in Sussex showed high levels of crime due to the presence of police call centers that received hoax calls.

(via @jonmac78 and The Guardian)

[visualsuccess-blog]

Debtris.

A fun animated visualization created by the whizzes at Information is Beautiful showing the relative size of different public and private debts.

[visualsuccess-blog]

Apple Market Share and Profit Share.  

As visualizations go, this stacked line chart is fairly ordinary Economist fare.  But the data story it tells is remarkable.  On the left, you see Nokia's market share eroding gradually since 07.  The drama comes from the right, where Nokia's share of profits gets gobbled up by Apple.  

It's from an Economist article that attributes Nokia's struggles to the fact that phone innovation is now based on software and data services, which are core strengths of US companies, not European ones.   

[visualsuccess-blog]

US Job losses over time.  Powerful - but harrowing - time series of job gains/losses before/during the recession.  2009 was dramatically in the red.  Texas actually did pretty well though, judging by the color.  

(via Slate Labs)

[visualsuccess-blog]

Cocktail recipes visualized.  Pretty self-explanatory.  Easy mixing at a glance.  

(via)

[visualsuccess-blog]

Putting the Vatican in Perspective

The inverse of the True Size of Africa I posted about is a remapping that puts the tiny Vatican in perspective.  Dwarfed by pretty much everything.  

(via Data Pointed)

[visualsuccess-blog]

Incidence of the word 'Freedom' in State of the Union addresses since FDR.  Do Republicans care more about freedom than Democrats?  Or do they strive to create fear that freedoms are being attacked?  Or both?  

NYT tracks the incidence of a number of other words here.  

[visualsuccess-blog]

Feltron's 2010 Annual Report.  An instant classic.  This time he infographic-izes his fathers life.  

My post on his 2009 report here.

[visualsuccess-blog]

Red States v Blue States for every election from 1920 to 2008.  Interesting to see the ebb and flow, the solid colors way back when, and the fact that the South was deep blue for Carter's election in 1976.

(via)

[visualsuccess-blog]

And, as a companion piece to the graph of all 2010 Pitchfork album reviews, this infographic shows the origin and genre breakdown of the songs in Pitchfork's 2010 Top 100 Songs ranking.  Good to see Atlanta tying with London (Deerhunter represent!)

(via http://www.verysmallarray.com/?p=1070 )

[visualsuccess-blog]

This site shows the distribution of ratings in Pitchfork's 2010 record reviews.  All the little square album icons are clickable to go to the full review.  Definitely a distribution skewed toward higher ratings.  Is that because Pitchfork selects mostly better-than-average records to review?  Or is there an inherent positive ratings bias?

(via http://www.yearinreviews.com/ )

[chrisreblogs-blog]

[visualsuccess-blog]

purns:

chrisreblogs:

(via splitsider)

“Treat your audience like poets and geniuses and they’ll have the chance to become them.” - Del

This requires no commentary.  Think of it as an "intermission" in this otherwise semi-serious blog. 

[visualsuccess-blog]

Similar to the recontextualized map of Africa, this map helps the viewer get a sense of the scale of civilian deaths in Baghdad in the Iraq war.  The Guardian created a map that overlaid the deaths onto a map of Baghdad, but the point here is to bring it home to a more familiar reference point.  

Baghdad's civilian death toll is much greater than LA's, but having a comparative layer with different color coding for LA's civilian deaths would help reinforce this point.  

(via Mike Brennan at Drexel University)