Piece de resistance: Data viz wrapup

Posted by on Mar 8, 2010 in Blog, CAR, class, data visualizations, django, projects, tufte | No Comments

And, scene.  That’s a term borrowed from theater, it’s used as an act or scene closes.  My giant Chicago art gallery persistence project is completed.  We’ve got a trend article that uses CAR techniques, and a Flash visualization and a searchable database.  The main thrust to the story is that of the galleries that existed ...

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Visual confections are more than mere presentation

Posted by on Feb 15, 2010 in Blog, class, data visualizations, theory, tufte | One Comment

Data visualization.  It’s one of those terms that can mean so many things.  I say I’m doing an independent study on data visualization this quarter.  That’s true.  But a better description would be “data visualizations for journalism.”  I’ve talked about this with people before, a lot of pieces are gorgeous, and they do convey information, ...

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Repetition, repetition: The power of multiples

Posted by on Feb 9, 2010 in Blog, class, tufte | No Comments

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 ...

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Changes in the numbers of students majoring in programming and social sciences

Posted by on Jan 19, 2010 in Blog, CAR, class, data visualizations, processing | 3 Comments

What is a traditional path to programming nowadays? It’s a question I’ve been thinking about a lot, esp. in the realm of the journalist-programmer. So many people from the older school of journalism came through using databases as tools to help with reporting, not because they took a class in it. That’s certainly encouraging for ...

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Importance of combining data analysis with context (reflections on readings from week two)

Posted by on Jan 11, 2010 in Blog, class, data visualizations, theory, tufte | No Comments

“Visual and Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Making Decisions,” Edward Tufte, Visual Explanations This chapter gave practical examples of something I’ve been saying from almost the first day of my data analysis journey — that it’s absolutely fundamental that the decisions behind the analysis are shown to the reader/user.  Data’s never perfect, and if ...

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Which states have been hit hardest by unemployment in the last decade?

Posted by on Jan 10, 2010 in Blog, CAR, class, data visualizations | One Comment

I matched up the unemployment rates for each state in November 2009 with the unemployment rates from Nov. 1999, that is, the same measurements from a decade prior. Then, I calculated the absolute change of the unemployment rate, to see which states have been hit the hardest, looking at the quantity of citizens they are able to keep employed.

Data set here, culled from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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Reflections on Visualization Theory (Data viz readings, week 1)

Posted by on Jan 4, 2010 in Blog, class, data visualizations, processing, tufte | No Comments

In this first set of reading, I learn that the principles of simplicity, accuracy and more are as true in data visualization as they are in a text story. Edward Tufte, Visual Explanations, “Images and Quantities” In Tufte’s first paragraph of Visual Explanations, he discusses the importance of readability — a concept I see as ...

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