reading response 2

Proclarity:
The purpose of data visualization is communicating information effectively.
Dots, lines, bars, boxes, charts, etc. are made to help viewers understand data better. How to use those elements is the key to successful communication. And, proclarity can be a good tool to organize data clearly. However, I wonder if being effective is always good thing. The result could be just boring visualization like bars and charts. The reading explains well about elements of data, and how to formulate them, but it seems like most of things described could be done  without thinking about them. Because  our brain processes some data intuitively, even before we think about them.

showing complex data:
This reading also talks about visualization techniques. The difference between Proclarity and Tidwell is that Tidwell article includes visualization in interactive platform such as software, website, and UI. I find this reading more interesting because it shows how same data can be visualized differently by rearranging data. It seems like the author talks about specific technique and how and when it can be used. But, I’m not sure I agree on that. I think everybody’s brain digest information differently, so there can’t be set rules about certain technique works best in certain cases.

Showing Complex Data

This reading had thoroughly explained several different types of visualization techniques, as well as providing examples and tips for implementation. While many of the examples were outdated, there were several examples that I never even thought of as a visualization technique, such as the cascading lists of the mac file-browser window, or the new-line form in data input mode. While the article says that there is no right or wrong in the alt-line color of a table, which changes it from more of a vertical layout to a horizontal layout, it seems to me that Tufte would consider the alt-coloring to be a waste of ink, lowering the data-ink measure.

Reading Responses [bobby]

Sorry this is late…

The following is my response to “The Database as System and Cultural Form: Anatomies of Cultural Narratives” by Christiane Paul.

The main focus of Paul’s paper is the idea of Database Aesthetics and how there are a multitude of ways for artists, designers, and programmers to interpret data (in databases) and reorganize them in creative and interesting ways. In designing the front-end visualization, new forms can emerge out of the data and connections and trends may be much more readily be seen. What’s interesting is that while many of the students, including myself, are interested in using data visualization as a means towards the goal of social commentary/illumination of social issues, nearly all of Paul’s examples fall into the realm of data-as-art: searching for interesting patterns and visually stunning structures.

The following is my response to “Data-Ink and Graphic Redesign”, a chapter from Visual Display of Quantitative Information, by Edward Tufte.

I really enjoyed this straightforward look at the topic of how much information is necessary to include in a graphic in relation to the amount of non-information. The balance between the two, he dubs the data-ink ratio. Through the use of several graphs (and various edits of each) he comes very clearly illustrates a number of his suggestions to would be data visualizers. His points are: reduce non-essential and redundant data in order to highlight the data and maximize the data-ink ratio. To this end, he also points out that we all must remember to create revisions and make edits.

How Different Groups Spend Their Day (Inspiration)

How Different Groups Spend Their Day (interactive graph from NYTimes, data from ATUS)

“The American Time Use Survey asks thousands of American residents to recall every minute of a day. Here is how people over age 15 spent their time in 2008.”

Credit goes to a coworker who passed this link on to me a few weeks ago. It displays data compiled by The American Time Use Survey that details the activities of different segments of the US population at any given hour in the average day. By clicking around the graph, one can see via animation the relative differences in time spent between activities amongst different segments of the population.

Alt Visualization: METAL!

(link)

Response: Reading 1

Data-Ink: Tufte

I really enjoyed seeing Tufte dismantle the typical bar graph. Everyone understands bar graphs, and we usually skim them quickly. They tend to be bulky and slow to read. I agree with earlier comments that say it is pretty intuitive to erase unnecessary parts of a visualization, but Tufte’s analysis of each and every line is much more thorough and precise than I was expecting. The idea of data-ink ratio is a very good one, but I think that he discredits a bit some valuable uses for ink in visualizations.

Database as System: Paul

This article brings up a good point about the challenges of interfacing the open-ended-ness of front-end interactions with logical, countable possibilities of code/database back end. The article also presents several interesting examples of unique types of data and databases that might be stored, stored, and used in interactive pieces. I think that a ridiculous amount of time must have been spent labeling the stills from all of Starsky and Hutch, and I am continually impressed with the sheer volume of work that is required to keep so much data organized.

Inspiration

Here are 2 projects that I really like:

• Zipcodes
• Visualizing Repetition in Songs