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Cloud Computing: Fact or Fiction?

http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2013/2/22/cloud-computing-fact-or-fiction.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CoolInfographics+%28Cool+Infographics%29&utm_content=FaceBook

DeVry University published this visualization by compiling information from 23 online sources (listed at the bottom of the Infographic) to address the concepts/misconceptions of Cloud Computing.  The data is engaging, the design is coherent and the ultimate purpose is to promote learning opportunities the institution can provide to enter this growing field.  The use of blues, grays and cloud shapes help reinforce the imagery of the subject matter while breaking up the different sections of the piece.  

I like how each of the data points contains superscripts that allow viewers to verify the claims made - a clear signal this was developed by academia.  The only drawback seems to be the awkward manner in which the original link displays the graphic on the DeVry.edu site.  There is no way to adequately control the magnification.  The developers seemed to assume that visitors would know to right-click and save the image as a jpeg and open the visualization in their default viewer.  They might have alienated a large number of interested visitors with the lack of viewing options.

Nevertheless, I believe the graphic is a useful way to introduce people to the ideas of Cloud Computing.  It could have benefited from providing interactivity such as live links to courses and programs the University offers in the areas that are mentioned where jobs are growing.  The data visualization aspects reached the cloud, but their marketing efforts fell back down to earth.

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I can't take credit for finding this one, but I was perhaps the instigator in the search.  While introducing data viz to 9th graders, one of the assignments was for them to go out and find an example to share with the class with a brief explanation.  (Similar to what this is.)  Many the visualizations caught their attention, and they were more focused on them then their next assignment. But, this one really captured their attention.  They were sharing the information with their peers and also myself.  Keep in mind, students don't often get excited about what they have learned and include the teacher.  They were demonstrating with other students the strategies they learned, and quoting statistics to inform others.  This is a very simple diagram with a 3-4 color scheme.  The artist labeled the information clearly and then demonstrated the text with the outline of hands.  

I think this shows the power of a well executed visualization.  14-15 year-olds are very tough critics, but they were excited.  Their excited reinforced their learning, making it more likely that they will take this information with them beyond the classroom.

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Constitutions of Classic Cocktails

This definitive guide to classic cocktails breaks down 68 drinks into their constituent parts. Follow the lines to see where spirits, mixers, and garnishes intersect to form delightful concoctions. This massive print contains over 40 types of alcohol (from distilled spirits to bitters), mixers from raspberry syrup to egg white(yuck!), and garnishes from the classic olive to a salted rim. This obsessively detailed chart also includes the ratios for each drink, as well as the proper serving glass, making it as functional as it is beautiful.

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This an enchanting little animation delivers two layers of information in a delightfully simple way. This isn't just an alphabetical list of the world's iconic architects; It's also an illustrated gallery of their most well-known creations. It's amazing the information they were able to fit into the context of the ABC's.

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Too Much Information

I came across this calendar today and it made me wonder if creating an infographic with exquisite aesthetics can ever justify creating something that's completely unusable.  Yes, this calendar is beautiful and original, but it's information overload. It truly begs the question of having a balance between personal expression and functionality. If one were to treat it simply as a wall calendar, it would still be difficult to use. Circular dates for a calendar? Perhaps if it had incorporated more relevant content such as astronomical events, the untraditional date formats could be overlooked.

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The Official vs. the Reality vs. the Perception

This was originally created back in 2011 ( see http://www.bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts/ )but is a good reminder when looking at organizations and processes.  There are differences between what one might call the “official” organization or process, the “reality”, and the “perception”.  People will very commonly state they do something in a particular way, but when observed, they are doing things quite differently.  This is not intentional deceit, but more often an unconscious set of actions.

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This is a narrative told via parallax scrolling. If we look at it through the lens of business process modeling, it's a really unique way to build up the narrative, and illustrate a flow. I liked moving through the story by using the scroll wheel on my mouse, rather than the arrow provided.

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The Influence Game

The Oriella Digital Journalism Study has presented its 5th annual report on journalism around the world, which includes an infographic as an accompaniment. Unfortunately, here is a case where the aesthetic quality of the visualization is interesting, but some of the details fall apart on closer inspection. For example, why have Brazil, China, and Russia been grouped together? Perhaps the full report offers an explanation, but the infographic offers no clue. Nevertheless, it does present some interesting information such as the  audience size and editorial staff size.  Interestingly, the infographic also shows that a large percentage of the news is sourced from social media, which means that a lot of the news that we get is regenerated content/old news. 

Check it out here:http://www.oriellaprnetwork.com/sites/default/files/research/ODJS%202012%20Infographic_0.pdf

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I am sure many have seen this visualization before, but while working on some work, this one popped back into my head.  It illustrates how, while cutting one hundred million in spending from the federal government sounds like an impressive number, in actuality, it is insignificant given the amount of money the government deals when dealing with trillions of dollars.  

It is very crudely done, but the success of this visualization is in its organization and story.  Ideas are presented in a very logical fashion, sympathizing with the viewer and making a connection to them in regards of their opinions regarding the one hundred million dollar cut.  Then the creator shows a series of images which illustrate what narrator is saying.  Then the demo begins by showing stacks of pennies on a table.  A series of draw lines indicate the different divisions of government spending until the section the President can cut from is identified.  The the narrator physically cuts a penny in half to show the amount of money that will be cut in relation to the whole.  

At the start of the video, he stated that we do not understand scale very well.  We understand the words, but we do not truly grasp the relationship between the numbers.  I could not agree more,  I too would have thought Obama was just stating an impressively large number to cut in spending in order to make an impact, but after this data visualization, I realize how truly insignificant it was.

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A Glimpse into the History of Data Visualization in Journalism

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/gallery/2013/jan/15/historic-infographics-history#/?picture=402388729&index=1 

Last month The Guardian, a British newspaper founded in 1827, published 27 data graphics on its Datablog gathered from its long history in print.  The gallery includes a wide variety of hand-drawn images from the growth of ocean liner sizes to a diagram of the 1908 Olympic Stadium brought to London from Rome, and many other interesting visualizations.  

The collection shows all sorts of charts, maps, drawings, even sketches of people in order to convey information visually.  I enjoyed scrolling through this post, reminding me how far we have come from earlier times.  But it also made me realize that data has always been challenging to present in a way that general audiences could understand.  Even among these low-tech images, some are difficult to comprehend.   

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Using Textexture to Map the State of the Union Address

This tangle of differently-sized nodes and connections is actually all the meaningful words from President Obama's latest State of the Union Address, mapped according to their associations to one another. This visualization was created using the tool Textexture, a javascript-based program that scans the full text of anything—speech, book, news article, etc.—and extracts the words that have to do with the subject matter. The tool's developer, Nodus Labs, has this to say about why the tool was created:

When we read a text, we normally follow it in quite a linear fashion: from left to right, from top to bottom. Even when we skim articles quickly online, the trajectory is still the same. However, this is not the most efficient method of reading: in the age of hypertext we tend to create our own narratives using the bits and pieces from different sources. This is an easy task with short Tweets or Facebook posts, but it becomes much more difficult when we’re dealing with newspaper articles, books, scientific papers. The amount of information we’re exposed to increases from day to day, so there’s a challenge of finding the new tools, which would enable us to deal with this overload.

This visualization was featured on the Guardian Datablog, and presented with little explanation. When I first saw it, I was overwhelmed with a sense of complexity. If the Textexture is successful with anything, it's expressing the underlying complexity of any linear document. But to really get at the meat of what the visualization is showing, you have to jump over a few conceptual hurdles. First, we see that each word node is a different size. Intuitively, we would think that the size was a representation of how often each words was used, but not so: it is actually a measure of how many connections to different "meaning clusters" that word makes. A "meaning cluster" is designated by the color of a set of nodes. Here is a word with few connections:

Here is a word with many connections:

Second, what is the meaning behind the arrangement of the nodes? When the visualization first loads, we see the nodes dance around as if to get to the right "spot". Yet, there seems to be no underlying structure—except, perhaps, that the largest nodes appear in the center (but still, interspersed with small nodes). It could be that this is a statement in itself about the how the speech was structured. I think a short explanation in the "How to use blurb" would mitigate this. It may be that these are things we just have to get accustomed to when we encounter new ways to visualize data. Something we're not used to just need a little explanation. These things aside, this is a very neat and responsive exploration tool, and it can be used to explore the underlying connections in any written document that interests us.

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Call for Entries: Visualize Open Government Data and Win $2000

Attention budding Data visualization experts: show your skills at visualizing government data for a chance to win two grand. The contest is sponsored by Google and the Open Knowledge Foundation, and it's hosted by the Guardian (US edition)

Click here for more details on data sources and how to enter.

The emphasis is on finding new, innovative ways to visualize data. But you don't have to be a developer to enter! Hope to see some great new visualizations out there.

Contest closes on April 2.

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Grand Taxonomy of Rap Name

http://bit.ly/9hG33Q

Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names visualization, 282 names from the world of rap music arranged according to semantics. Which depicts a complex web of relationships between rap names, showing how various name origins, from physical attributes to audacious misspelling, are all interconnected. 

If I've learned anything from this MPS course, it's that I apparently don't use enough idea maps or flow charts to express my ideas. I understood how compelling idea maps could be, but I didn't truly understand until I saw the world of rap names visually mapped out before me.

Organized according to semantics like alphanumeric names (D-12), queens (Queen Latifah) and "audacious misspellings" (Ginuwine, Xzibit), the Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names Poster by Pop Chart Lab visually arranges 282 rap names. Not only is the print incredibly resourceful, it is also quite nice to look at.

If there's one thing missing, I think "Onyx" deserves a cross reference with "black". =)

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This infographic by the Guttmacher Institute, an organization concerned with “advancing sexual and reproductive health worldwide through research, policy analysis and public education” (http://www.guttmacher.org/), is one from a series entitled, Roe at 40: New infographics illustrate key facts about abortion. These infographics are journalistic in that they make visible facts of ongoing public concern, which are otherwise invisible or difficult to access and understand by a broad audience. As the caption reads, the graphics ���aim to ensure that the national debate on abortion is guided by facts, not misinformation”. Typically, the information that the general public receives about abortion and other women’s reproductive rights issues comes from mainstream media channels as either news (e.g. journalistic reports) or social commentary (e.g. talk shows). While both news and social commentary about these issues are prevalent in the forms of television, radio, print, and web, they both often fall short of presenting (much less discussing) data-supported evidence beyond a small set of (sensational) factors. When these few (token) data are reported, they are often in the service of attention-grabbing sound bytes or cursory headlines used to pull viewers/readers/listeners into what ends up being either insufficient/incomplete discussion or opinionated monologues. To get beyond insufficient/incomplete news stories and opinionated commentary viewers/readers/listeners have to seek out more specialized sources of information. The significance of this infographic, particularly when it’s read in context of the series, is that it distills pages of findings from evidence-based research and represents them in a way that is clear (i.e. maintains the integrity of the data), cohesive, concise, cognitively accessible (i.e. to a broad and diverse audience), and visually appealing. In other words, it provides to the viewer a (relatively) high-value return (i.e. more complete picture of facts on the issue) for a low investment (i.e. of time and effort).

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There are many tools out there, here is another list: "10 Tools for Creating Infographics and Visualizations".  The added bonus of this list is found at the end:

Planning your infographic

So now you've got a bunch of tools you can play with, but before you go too crazy adding bubble charts and radial bar graphs, take some time to really plan out your infographic and what you want people to take away from it. Here are some tips on researching and planning a great visualization

Learn from Others

Understand graph options and themes

Plan your Visualization

... and of course the thread of comments has many pointers and ideas.

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This data visualization shows the severe discrepancies in the benefits offered to new parents here in the United States as compared to the international community.  Both time and money are represented for women and men.  While I understand the overall value of the information., the way in which they show the amount of money paid out to women on leave is a bit confusing at first reading.  Still it is obvious, the intent of this information visualization is to show that the United States is doing a poor job of helping out new mothers and fathers.

The color scheme is limited to only three colors, and there are a total of three different visualizations shown with one piece of information written as simply text. This information is not complicated, and as a mother, I would have liked to have seen more indepth information represented here.

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Chartwell - Information Visualization from fonts

Chartwell is a typeface created by Travis Kochel that uses ligatures to create charts and graphs out of text strings. Using a set combination of numbers and codes, one can create bar charts, pie charts, line charts inline with text. This typeface always charts and graph, which are normally set apart from text, to be placed in line.

While this isn't an information visualization, it is a unique tool for visualizing data on a small scale.