"visualization tool" entries
Network Science dashboards
Networks graphs can be used as primary visual objects with conventional charts used to supply detailed views
With Network Science well on its way to being an established academic discipline, we’re beginning to see tools that leverage it. Applications that draw heavily from this discipline make heavy use of visual representations and come with interfaces aimed at business users. For business analysts used to consuming bar and line charts, network visualizations take some getting used. But with enough practice, and for the right set of problems, they are an effective visualization model.
In many domains, networks graphs can be the primary visual objects with conventional charts used to supply detailed views. I recently got a preview of some dashboards built using Financial Network Analytics (FNA). Read more…
What I use for data visualization
An array of tools for tackling data visualizations.
Depending on the nature of the problem, data size, and deliverable, I still draw upon an array of tools for data visualization. As I survey the Design track at next month’s Strata conference, I see creators and power users of visualization tools that many data scientists have come to rely on. Several pioneers will lead sessions on (new) tools for creating static and interactive charts, against small and massive data sets.
The Grammar of Graphics
To this day, I find R (specifically ggplot2) to be a tool I turn to for producing static visualizations. Even the simplest charts allow me to quickly spot data problems and anomalies, and a tool like ggplot2 can accomplish a lot in very few lines of code. Charts produced by ggplot2 look much nicer than simple R plots and once you get past the initial learning curve, they are easy to fine-tune and customize.
Hadley Wickham1, the creator of ggplot2, is speaking on two new domain specific languages (ggvis and dplyr) that make it easy for R users to declaratively create interactive web graphics. As Hadley describes it, ggvis is interactive Grammar of Graphics for R. As more data scientists turn to interactive visualizations that can be shared through web browsers, ggvis is the natural next tool for ggplot2 users.
Leland Wilkinson, the primary author of The Grammar of Graphics2, will also be at Strata to lead a tutorial on an interesting expert system that lets machine-learning techniques be accessible to business users. Leland’s work has influenced many other visualization tools including Polaris (from the Stanford team that founded Tableau), Bokeh, and ggbio (for genomics data). Effective visualization techniques will be an important component of his Strata tutorial.
Visualization of the Week: Visualizing marginalization
A look at the World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE) interactive visualization tool.
The Education for All Global Monitoring Report team launched a new visualization tool this week, the World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE).
This is far more than a typical visualization that presents information in an interesting way. WIDE is an interactive website that lets users mine and explore the data themselves.
The about page on the WIDE website explains that the tool pulls together education data from more than 60 countries. Users can compare education levels and availability between countries and groups, and results can narrow down to parameters such as gender, ethnicity, location and wealth. The data is freely available and can be downloaded in an Excel spreadsheet. Charts, tables or maps created by users can also be shared.
The following screenshot shows an example of the data explored through specific indicators — in this case, populations living in extreme education poverty:
