Visualizations

Follow-up. Data: dimensions. Basic graphs.Gapminder. Excel. Wordle.

Homework: Postings: research and experiment.

Follow-up from guest lecture

• Summarize?

• ?

Natural Language Processing

• Text to– text or– data extraction

Speech recognition

• input is sound wave captured as electrical amplitudes and frequencies

• first step is doing Fourier Analysis to encode sound wave as set of sine waves

• next step is segmentation: divide into (best guess) at syllabus (phonemes)

• THEN use statistical approach and/or grammar approach to make matches

NLP and Speech reco

• Can combine• For each, issues of scope, speaker(aka user),

training or not

• Distinct applications– limited (directed) speech– dictation– data extraction– translation– ???

Consider

• several possible topics for presentation

• I will demonstrate duolingo.com which I am using to learn Spanish!!!– another possibility for presentation topic

Objective

… of graphs, charts, diagrams, visualizations is to represent data. Typically data is sets of numbers or sets of other information.

Examples:• height and weight of some set of people

– possibly with other characteristics and over time

• GDP, average longevity of countries– population, region, over time

• frequency of words in a piece of text

Caution

• If you don't have much data, then not much to do…

• if data is wrong or definitions not understood or misunderstood, ….

Preview

• Next Monday: guest speaker curator from Neuberger present artist visualizations

Organization / conference / competition / links

• http://www.visualizing.org/

2012 Olympic medal count

• Issues– what counts? How to weigh types of medals?– Adjustment for population

• what about wealth of country?

• http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/08/07/sports/olympics/the-best-and-worst-countries-in-the-medal-count.html?ref=olympics

Gapminder

• http://www.gapminder.org/

Excel graphs

• Construct data

• Bar graphs

• When are pie graphs appropriate?

• x-y graphs• bubble graphs

Wordle

• http://www.wordle.net/

Dimension

• The term 'dimension' is used for any attribute of a thing, not just height/width/length

• Gapminder examples appeal (I think) because of quantity and dimensions of data– dynamic representation of time– color for regions– comparisons

Napoleon's March

• … into Russia 1812-1813

• Called by Edward Tufte (and others) the best (and still the best) graphical visualization.

• Use Google to get multiple versions

• Your opinion?

My Ds mnemonic

• definitions• denominator• dimensions• [what's the] difference• data sources• distributionThe point of visualizations is to show these

things (and others?)

Examples

• … and excuse to start reminding you to vote

• http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/

• http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/27/new-york-not-as-blue-as-it-could-be/

Example

• Drawn to show electoral votes (and assessment on how states will vote)– dimensions of size versus population

http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/electoral-map

– Note: the geographic view does not

accurately display Alaska or Hawaii in position and size!!!

– Try multiple maps (scenarios) + our own?

If

these visualizations make you less likely to vote because New York is predicted to be solidly Democratic…

• popular vote will count in terms of mandate• there are down ticket contests• increasing the youth vote will make younger

people be more important to politicians• good to get into the habit

• people have died for the right to vote!

Example

• Periodic table of visualization methods (!) Periodic table: http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html – assumes the periodic table has meaning for

viewers

Timeline

• http://www.datavis.ca/milestones/ – on visualizations

• http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/mountains-out-of-molehills/ – see also http://www.informationisbeautiful.net

Tools

• http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215504/22_free_tools_for_data_visualization_and_analysis

• http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_best_tools_for_visualization.php

Note / caution / repeat

• If you don't have much data, then visualization does not help– if data is (potentially) misunderstood or

misleading

• Think about Ds

Homework

• Decide on presentation topic and make proposal to the appropriate moodle forum

• Postings: usual plus– any visualization topic

• Tools• Edward Tufte:

– Home page (not that easy to navigate and mainly tool to sell his workshops and books which are excellent: http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

» Forum: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=1 » Critique of PowerPoint for lectures!» etc.

Next class: guest speaker on artist visualizations