"visualization of the week" entries
Visualization of the Week: Every bomb dropped in the London Blitz
Researchers at BombSight.org have developed an interactive map visualizing the London Blitz.
A team of researchers and developers at BombSight.org has put together an interactive map showing every bomb dropped during the London Blitz of World War II, between October 7, 1940, and June 6, 1941. The bird’s eye view of the map (shown below), though inaccessible for deriving any detailed data, shows the sheer volume of destruction wreaked upon the city in those eight months.
Click here for the full visualization.
The real value in this visualization is found when you drill down to specific areas. The dots turn into bomb icons that can be clicked to bring up additional information about that particular devastation, including a “read more” link that brings up a page with related images in that area and related stories from people who were nearby at the time of that bomb drop:
Visualization of the Week: On tour with the Rolling Stones for 50 years
An interactive timeline visualization of The Rolling Stones' touring history.
The Rolling Stones have reached their 50th anniversary milestone. The band celebrated by kicking off an anniversary tour, and the team over at CartoDB took the opportunity to test their new CartoDB Javascript library and visualize The Rolling Stones’ complete touring history.
Click here for the full visualization.
From a data display perspective, the visualization is an interesting approach to a timeline story. It shows a progression through visualization as opposed to the more traditional static images along a bar or time graph.
Visualization of the Week: NFL rushing stats
Every NFL rushing play from 2008-2011, visualized.
Juice Labs has cooked up an interactive visualization, “The Spider,” showing rushing tendencies of every NFL team from the 2008 through 2011 seasons. Want to know which way the New England Patriots typically run — and the average or total yards gained — on first and long, or Stevan Ridley’s average yards gained on 4th and short during the 2011 season (-1 … ouch …)? The visualization shows this and more for every team, player, and rush.
Visualization of the Week: Hubway commuters’ time saved
An interactive visualization shows how bike-sharing service Hubway has saved its commuters more than 45,000 hours of travel time.
Boston’s bike-sharing service Hubway recently opened up its data and held a visualization contest. The winners were announced this week: Overall Best Visualization went to MIT student Virot “Ta” Chiraphadhanakul. His interactive visualization measures trip times from one Hubway station to another and compares the times to the same trips using Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) public transportation and/or walking. His results show that in 513,733 one-way trips, commuters have saved more than 45,000 hours of travel time by using Hubway.
The overall interactive chart allows you to hover over specific dots, or trips, to see travel times and time saved using Hubway. Bigger dots represent more popular trips.
Visualization of the Week: How cities flow
Using Uber's ride data, neuroscientist Bradley Voytek created a visualization showing the flow of people throughout nine US cities.
In January, Uber’s resident neuroscientist Bradley Voytek put together a visualization of the flow of people in San Francisco — the volume and direction of people traveling from one city neighborhood to another — using Uber’s ride data. Now, he’s done it for eight more US cities.
Here’s a look at the flow in Boston:
Visualization of the Week: The voting shift from 2008 to 2012
A New York Times map visualizes the shift in Republican and Democratic votes from 2008 to 2012.
To visualize the US presidential election results from yesterday, the New York Times put together a series of maps showing the results from various angles, including overall results by state, by county, and by size of lead. The Times also looked at the shift in Republican and Democratic votes compared to the 2008 election. The following map shows that shift — the longer the arrow, the bigger the shift; the overall shift toward Republican is interesting given the Democratic win yesterday.
Click here for the full visualization.
Hovering over arrows pulls up details comparing the 2008 votes to the 2012 votes — and you can click to zoom in on a particular area.
Visualization of the Week: 161 years of hurricanes
Using NOAA data, developer John Nelson visualizes every hurricane since 1851.
Given the pummeling the East Coast of the U.S. has taken this week from Hurricane Sandy, a hurricane visualization seemed apropos. Simon Rogers at The Guardian’s Data Blog highlighted developer John Nelson’s work visualizing every hurricane since 1851:
Click here for the full visualization.
In a blog post, Nelson describes the view: “You are looking up at the Earth; Antarctica at center, the Americas to the right, Australia and Asia to the left, and Africa at the bottom.” The color variations are tied to hurricane intensity — the brighter the dot, the more intense the hurricane. He also brings up some interesting hurricane facts, noting the void circling the image is the equator, as hurricanes can’t cross it. Read more…
Visualization of the Week: Forecasting the US presidential election
The New York Times visualizes data from polling aggregation website FiveThirtyEight to forecast the winner of the US presidential election.
The US presidential election is just weeks away, and there is no shortage of polls and collected indicators — in the US and around the world — being used to predict the outcome. Polling aggregation website FiveThirtyEight has made a science of forecasting the US presidential election results, and the New York Times has visualized its election 2012 forecast data, including historical context, to show how state allegiances to the Democratic and Republican parties have shifted.
The interactive visualization shows each candidate’s forecasted position based on either the size of the lead or the number of predicted electoral votes, along with the historical shifts through past elections. Data points running down the left side can be highlighted in the visualization as well. In the screenshot below, the visualization shows the forecasted electoral votes, with the added highlight of the historical and predicted allegiance of Ohio, the state that has voted for the winner in every election since 1964.
Visualization of the Week: Bond film body count
The Guardian's Datablog team digs into Bond film data to calculate the death toll.
Skyfall, the new James Bond flick, is due out November 9. The data team over at The Guardian thought it a good time to take a deeper look at the James Bond film history and tally up the dead bodies.
Excluding the controversial Casino Royale movies and Never Say Never Again, the data the team gathered showed 1,299 deaths total, with Bond taking out 352 of those. In a post at The Guardian, they’ve broken out the data in deaths per film and deaths per Bond. They also constructed an interactive guide illustrating the deaths per Bond, per movie, as well as highlighting the most unusual deaths. The screenshot below shows Pierce Brosnan’s Bond stats from the interactive guide — Brosnan was far and away the deadliest Bond, with 135 kills over four films.
Visualization of the Week: London’s bicycle commuter system
Researchers visualize 5 million bicycle treks on London's Barclays Cycle Hire system.
Jo Wood, professor of visual analytics at City University in London, England, along with collaborator Andrew Huddart, put together an animated visualization of London’s Barclays Cycle Hire system, beginning with its launch in 2010.
In a post at NewScientist, Douglas Heaven explains that Wood and Huddart pulled data from 5 million commuter bicycle treks. The visualization not only shows the routes taken, but the animation allows users to see a progression of the data that reveals even further insights. Heaven reports:
Around the 1-minute mark, structure emerges from the chaos and three major systems become clear: routes around, and through, the lozenge-shaped Hyde Park in the west, and commutes in and out of King’s Cross St Pancras in the north and between Waterloo and the City in the east.