Another Metaphor for Visualization: Writing
Andrew Gelman recently wrote a blog posting in which he draws an interesting comparison between writing styles and graphics styles. I think he’s on to something, and the comparison can be taken a bit...
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Quo Vadis, Many Eyes?
Remember when visualization for the masses was all the rage, back in 2007? We were so young and hopeful. Many Eyes and Swivel were the harbingers of a new age of data literacy and well-informed debate....
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A Criticism of Visualization Criticism Criticism
Criticism in visualization can be harsh, pedantic, and stupid. But it is also a useful tool that shows the thinking behind the seemingly simple graphical shapes we use, and teaches people things they...
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Data Display vs. Data Visualization
Gregor Aisch recently wrote a posting about gauges, and how he finds them inspiring and beautiful in their simplicity, even though they are generally disliked in visualization. His posting highlights a...
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Cognitive Dissonance on the River Tyne
Moritz Stefaner and Stephan Thiel have created a visualization of sensor data acquired by a floating mill on the river Tyne in Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain. Their choice of a flow metaphor for...
View ArticleEdward Tufte’s One Day Course: A Review
Last Monday, I got to attend Edward Tufte’s one-day course. I was looking forward to a day of interesting examples, ideas, and discussions, but was disappointed by the amount of rambling and largely...
View ArticleReview: Alberto Cairo, The Functional Art
When Alberto Cairo first told me about the book he was writing, called The Functional Art, he warned me that only a small part of it was going to be about visualization. I have no idea what he was...
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The Changing Goals of Data Visualization
The visual representation of data has gone through a number of phases, with its goals switching back and forth between analysis and presentation over time. Many introductions to visualization tend to...
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Visual Math Gone Wrong
Data visualization is often used to just display data, with little thought put into supporting visual thinking. Giving people tools to do some visual math is a good idea; the visual properties need to...
View ArticleReview: Scott Christianson, 100 Diagrams That Changed the World
I recently came across this book that claims to collect the 100 most important diagrams in the history of mankind. It’s a good collection, with many wonderful examples, though it has its flaws. To get...
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Review: Chabris, Simons, The Invisible Gorilla
Inattentional and change blindness are two fascinating phenomena that more people should be aware of. The Invisible Gorilla describes them as well as some other interesting and surprising...
View ArticleIt’s Just Too Easy
Once you’ve seen one visualization book, you’ve seen them all. They tend to all look similar, use the same examples, and don’t provide much depth. Is it too easy to write a book when you can use such...
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Another Look at Many Eyes, 18 Months Later
In February of last year, I wrote a posting based on some data I had scraped from Many Eyes, and criticizing where I thought it was going (or not going). Here is an update, eighteen months later, of...
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