Repetition, repetition: The power of multiples

February 9th, 2010

Teachers are true heroes in today’s society, I owe so much to almost every one that I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. As the daughter of an elementary school teacher, and from teaching some classes on my own, I know that repetition is a key part of passing knowledge from your brain to my brain. And if you think about it, so much of what we do as journalists is a form of teaching, as we inform the public. That’s why repetition can be a very valuable technique in data visualization, and Tufte devoted a chapter to it in this week’s reading, titled “Multiples in Space and Time.” (more…)

Treemapping Gov. Quinn’s State of the State

February 9th, 2010

This week in the Processing book, I learned all about trees and hierarchies. There's a lot of potential here for allowing the user to delve deeper into interactives by providing multiple layers. This is a very cool example of how programming helps support my theory of journalism -- the deeper the information you offer, the more the user has to explore Read More...

Recognize the importance of journalistic creativity

February 2nd, 2010

Applying for jobs is scary, I'll be the first to say it. People are getting laid off left and right, and I, as a 23-year-old, have the audacity to say I have the ability and right to take those jobs, and that I'll make it worth an employer's while because I'm energetic, insanely devoted/obsessed and I have new media/programming skills Read More...

Relating zip codes and geography using Processing

February 1st, 2010

This week I tackled recreating Ben Fry's Zipdecode project, which he gives great step-by-step instructions for in his Visualizing Data book that I have been following along with this quarter. It's an interesting take on the concept of the scatterplot, even before using its interactive features, it asserts its usefulness as a population density map Read More...

Data Delver: Tyson Evans, NY Times Interface Engineer

January 31st, 2010

Data visualization is a tool that is applicable in many industries. Some visualizations are made to help business owners make decisions, some to help reporters perform analysis to make discoveries. But what takes a visualization, or interactive piece, from something that helps a news producer, to something that helps a news consumer, requires someone who understands what a user is looking for Read More...

Data Delver: Matt Waite, St. Petersburg Times

January 31st, 2010

Journalism in the modern era. What is it? I've got some ideas, and a lot of questions, but I certainly don't know the answer. It necessitates more than a story, more than an article, more than a photo, more than a Web page. I'm pretty certain of one thing, though: It's got to do with data, and probably to do with data-driven applications Read More...

Parallelism: Packing information into visualization

January 30th, 2010

Information is fascinating at many different levels. Show me a simple graph of the components that make up a whole, that tells me something. I've found almost anything is more interesting when looked at across time, since it adds another dimension. This also helps with analysis, because outliers or rapid changes are often related to historical events Read More...

Data Delver: Perry Swanson, The Gazette

January 29th, 2010

When we think of computer-assisted reporting, large-scale investigative projects are often what first come to mind. There's no question of the value and impact such endeavors can have on society. But CAR has many other purposes, too. One is bringing evidence to and localizing breaking news, and helping people find out more about their communities Read More...

Personal reflection: Tufte’s messing with my head

January 25th, 2010

My eyes have been opened by the readings I've been doing from Tufte. While I only assigned myself "Visual Explanations," I'm beginning to feel as if I want to soak up as much of his work as possible. So, I went to my advisor's office (Rich Gordon), where the walls are lined with what feels like an infinite number of CAR/data/viz/new media books, and procured Tufte's other three works Read More...

Ben Fry on visualizations and Processing

January 25th, 2010

I've been working with Processing for a few weeks now.  Some people have asked me when I'm going to start delving into the data set for my final project.  Good question.  The answer is that I'm still trying to get some of these theory and technical tools down.  I've been having a lot of fun exploring the Processing language, and comparing it to my experience with Actionscript/Flash Read More...