Jesse Robbins' excellent blog post - Unveiling the Beauty of Statistics - at O'Reilly Radar points us to another recent and Rosling video presentation - this time from the OECD World Forum in Istanbul. Unfortunately, the camera work is only a fraction as good as with the TED presentations and weather channel type presentation showing only Rosling speaking or showing a long view of the whole auditorium. In neither case is the exciting data that Rosling is talking about visible to the video viewer.
However, Rosling's message in this talk is still exactly on the money - a continued call
for more open and available data,
for better tools for visualizing it, and
for making it available to ordinary citizens around the world.
The chorus of voices echoing this message is rising. Web sites with visual tools such as Gapminder, Swivel and ManyEyes are leading the charge and changing the way we think about data.
Showing posts with label many eyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label many eyes. Show all posts
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Iraq Trend Data Set now posted to Swivel and Many Eyes
A while back we mentioned the great new data sharing and visualization web site called Many Eyes and we pointed out an Iraq Trend data set we had uploaded so that others could more readily examine and analyze it.
We've recently come across another great new data sharing and visualization web site called Swivel and have uploaded the same data set there for comparison purposes at: http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/show/1004780.
Both Many Eyes and Swivel fall into a category I have started calling Trend Visualization Appliances. The amazing Gapminder work also fits into this category as do all the various stock market visualization tools currently available.
The old fashioned form of trend visualization appliances (e.g. a standard report including graphical output) can still be pretty useful when managed carefully. For further comparison, here is the link to a PDF report that graphically presents the same data - vizualizing-trends-ohanlon-testimony.pdf.
Similarly, for data sharing, the old fashioned URL links to csv files offer an alternative to the WEB 2.0 mechanisms such as Many Eyes and Swivel. Here's the Iraq trend data the old fashioned way: ohanlon-key-factors.csv
So many choices, so little time. How can we decide which is best for our purposes?
I'll be revisiting this topic, but for now, my own criteria for deciding which tools I will use at a given moment are:
1) ease of use,
2) shortness of learning curve, and
3) personal productivity and time saving -- the speed at which I can navigate through complex trend data sets to discover previously hidden patterns.
What do you think?
We've recently come across another great new data sharing and visualization web site called Swivel and have uploaded the same data set there for comparison purposes at: http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/show/1004780.
Both Many Eyes and Swivel fall into a category I have started calling Trend Visualization Appliances. The amazing Gapminder work also fits into this category as do all the various stock market visualization tools currently available.
The old fashioned form of trend visualization appliances (e.g. a standard report including graphical output) can still be pretty useful when managed carefully. For further comparison, here is the link to a PDF report that graphically presents the same data - vizualizing-trends-ohanlon-testimony.pdf.
Similarly, for data sharing, the old fashioned URL links to csv files offer an alternative to the WEB 2.0 mechanisms such as Many Eyes and Swivel. Here's the Iraq trend data the old fashioned way: ohanlon-key-factors.csv
So many choices, so little time. How can we decide which is best for our purposes?
I'll be revisiting this topic, but for now, my own criteria for deciding which tools I will use at a given moment are:
1) ease of use,
2) shortness of learning curve, and
3) personal productivity and time saving -- the speed at which I can navigate through complex trend data sets to discover previously hidden patterns.
What do you think?
Monday, February 12, 2007
Many Eyes - A New Doorway for Graphical Collaboration
From our previous post we noted that:
Once you register, you can upload interesting data sets and create visualizations that you feel are meaningful. Others can view your visualization and comment. They can also create their own variant visualizations using the data you uploaded and publish these for others to view and comment. Many different visualization formats including time series graphs, bar charts, scatter charts as well as some very creative new chart types are available in an interactive fashion. Creating new charts is similar to the kinds of interactions you might experience with one of the many stock quote charting web sites such as the java charts on prophet.net
Even better, once a data set is uploaded by anyone, it is possible someone else to download that data set for further analysis on their system using their favorite tools. For example, you might want to take a set of raw time line data series and compute some additional columns of data as we did in one of our previous Iraq posts. You could then take your new data set with added columns and upload it to Many Eyes for others to work with directly.
To test out these capabilities, I uploaded the O'Hanlon indicators that we have recently posted about. You can find a visualization that shows a single indicator that I created at: Percent of Coalition Troops Appears to be Shrinking. Once you get to that page, you can select other indicators from the list box on the left side to view the other trends at work. You can also download the entire table to your computer or leave a comment or create at publish your own chart. [Unfortunately, at present the long indicator names cannot be fully seen during the selectino process. So if you want to know what they are, you can find out by clicking on the table like icon element to look at and scroll through the top row of the data set where the indicator names appear]
I see Many Eyes (what a great name) as a big step forward in thinking about, discussing, understanding, and collaborating about the most important factors in our lives. I expect I will be uploading additional data sets and creating new visualizations there in the future. I would love to hear what you think about his newly available capability.
We believe in many eyes, many hands, many voices working together on the path of mutual discovery (rather than the idea of a single expert figuring it all out and presenting it to us in final form).To help foster exactly this kind of process, I am excited to note a new web site, Many Eyes that is now available for exactly this purpose. As they describe it on their home page: Many Eyes is a place to: view your data, ask questions, share your discoveries, and harness the collective intelligence of the net for insight and analysis.
Once you register, you can upload interesting data sets and create visualizations that you feel are meaningful. Others can view your visualization and comment. They can also create their own variant visualizations using the data you uploaded and publish these for others to view and comment. Many different visualization formats including time series graphs, bar charts, scatter charts as well as some very creative new chart types are available in an interactive fashion. Creating new charts is similar to the kinds of interactions you might experience with one of the many stock quote charting web sites such as the java charts on prophet.net
Even better, once a data set is uploaded by anyone, it is possible someone else to download that data set for further analysis on their system using their favorite tools. For example, you might want to take a set of raw time line data series and compute some additional columns of data as we did in one of our previous Iraq posts. You could then take your new data set with added columns and upload it to Many Eyes for others to work with directly.
To test out these capabilities, I uploaded the O'Hanlon indicators that we have recently posted about. You can find a visualization that shows a single indicator that I created at: Percent of Coalition Troops Appears to be Shrinking. Once you get to that page, you can select other indicators from the list box on the left side to view the other trends at work. You can also download the entire table to your computer or leave a comment or create at publish your own chart. [Unfortunately, at present the long indicator names cannot be fully seen during the selectino process. So if you want to know what they are, you can find out by clicking on the table like icon element to look at and scroll through the top row of the data set where the indicator names appear]
I see Many Eyes (what a great name) as a big step forward in thinking about, discussing, understanding, and collaborating about the most important factors in our lives. I expect I will be uploading additional data sets and creating new visualizations there in the future. I would love to hear what you think about his newly available capability.
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