Data Stories

We talk with Rachel Binx about developing data visualization software for NASA.

We talk about data visualization literacy with Jeremy Boy, vis designer and postdoc at NYU, Helen Kennedy, Professor of Digital Society, and Andy Kirk, vis educator and editor of visualisingdata.com.

We talk with Assistant Professor Miriah Meyer and PhD candidate Nina McCurdy about Poemage, a data visualization tool they developed to analyze the sonic topology of poems.

Hadley created a number of hugely popular libraries for the R language, including ggplot2, which is used throughout the world to analyze and present data with R. On the show we talk about how he created ggplot2 and how it became so popular, some of the other libraries he built and the R ecosystem, as well as strategies to create popular software for data analysis and visualization. Enjoy Hadley Wickham!

We talk with Ben Wellington about his blog I Quant NY, where he writes about surprising facts he finds analyzing NYC open data.

We are recapping the year in data visualization with Andy Kirk and Robert Kosara — what were the biggest trends, the biggest misses, and what do we expect for 2016?

Hey folks, It's time for another project-centric episode, and we finally talk about one of our favorite projects of the year — "Dear Data" by the most fabulous tag team of data illustrators around: Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. Their year-long project is about how "two women who switched continents get to know each other through the data they draw and send across the pond" and consists of 104 hand–drawn postcards all of which document one week of their lives. How much they cursed, laughed, read, smiled at strangers, … — all of this is documented in inventive, charming and very analogue ways. Learn all about the project — how they started it, what they learned, and how it will live on — in the episode. Links mentioned: Yay for slow data! Reporter app: http://www.reporter-app.com/ Notebook app: http://www.notebooksapp.com/ And read the episode transcript here! Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik, who allow you to explore the hidden relationships within your data that lead to meaningful insights.

Enrico recaps the IEEE VIS’15 conference with Robert Kosara and Johanna Fulda, and we compare notes about conference projects and papers. Check out our website for project links and video previews!

We have Assistant Professor Chris Collins from University of Ontario Institute of Technology on the show to talk about text visualization. Chris explains what Text Vis is, provides examples from his and others' work, describes tools and knowledge to get started, and looks into the future of the field, including its challenges and opportunities. And here's a really cool new thing — we have a transcript of the whole show! Browse the text, search for quotes and chapters, and maybe even… visualize it? Let us know if it's useful! Enjoy the show! LINKS Chris Collins and His Lab FluxFlow (twitter rumors detection and visualization) | See also “How riot rumours spread on Twitter” (from the Guardian) Probing Projections Project DocuBurst Patterns in Passwords Book: “Graphs, Maps, and Trees” Lexichrome (visualizing the color of words) Literature Fingerprinting (showing how different authors write) (PDF) Visualizing Text Readability (PDF) Text visualization browser (collection/taxonomy of text vis projects) [good pl

Here we go with a new project episode! This time we talk with Lisa Charlotte Rost about her project "My Google Search History." Lisa is a visualization designer based in Berlin and the project is about how she collected and visualized her google search history to look into her personal data. In the episode we discuss how she came up with the idea and all the steps she followed to realize it. She has also a nice page on github with code that you can reuse to do the same thing with your own data! This episode is sponsored by Qlik who allows you to explore hidden relationships within data that lead to insights. Check out the new blog post on the qlik blog called: "The role of multiple devices in our workspaces" by Donald Farmer. And, there is a big Qlik Sense Roadshow with over 100 events in Europe. You can download Qlik Sense for free at: www.qlik.de/datastories. LINKS Lisa's home page Lisa's tutorial on making histograms in R Lisa's tutorial on how to make your own google search visualization Lisa's tuto

Hey folks, we are back! We really hope you had a good summer. We start the new season with an "internal" episode. We give numerous updates on Data Stories. Things have changed recently -- we have future ideas and two great events to get in touch with us! Moritz talks about False Positive, an art project on data, privacy and identity. He also talks about the new Inclusive Growth Report from the World Economic Forum, for which he designed the graphics and website together with Stefanie Posavec and 9elements. Enrico talks about the RevEx tool and his collaboration with ProPublica for the analysis of millions of medical Yelp reviews, his work with Human Rights experts and a recently published paper on visualization design with climate scientists. This episode is sponsored by Qlik who allows you to explore hidden relationships within data that lead to insights. Read Patrik Lundblad's blog posts on the three pillars of data visualization(1,2,3). You can download Qlik Sense for free at: www.qlik.de/datastories.

Hi folks! We have Blacki Migliozzi and Eric Roston from Bloomberg on the show to talk about their recent data graphic piece on climate change called "What's Really Warming The World?" The graphic shows, through a "scrollytelling," what factors may influence the world's temperature according to well-established climate models. It guides you through a series of questions and visuals to all you to see for yourself what correlates (spoiler: carbon emissions) and what does not. On the show we talk about how the Bloomberg team came up with this piece, their interaction with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) scientists who developed the model, and the many challenges of translating important scientific knowledge into more digestible, but not simplistic, articles that everyone can read. We also talk about how they took inspiration from the children book "Where's Spot?" (which is a nice narrative technique for vis!) and all the delicate design decisions they had to make. ... And don't miss the mo

We have Dani Llugany Pearson from Domestic Data Streamers to talk about their studio and the amazing participatory data installations that they make. You really need to see examples of what they do! Go to http://domesticstreamers.com/ and take a look at their projects. In Data Strings they ask people to add their own thread to a set of physical parallel coordinates. In Life Line they use a grid of 800 balloons to show the point between one’s real age and the age at which one would like to die. In Golden Age they use a grid to let people mark with a log what is their age and what they believe is the best age in people's life. On the show we talk about how they got started and the process behind some of their projects. Enjoy the show! --- This episode is sponsored by Qlik who allows you to explore hidden relationships within data that lead to insights. Qlik Sense allows you to create personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards. You can download it for free at: www.qlik.de/datastories. --- LINKS D

We have economist Max Roser from University of Oxford to talk about his Our World in Data project where he visualizes the social, economic, and environmental history of humanity up to the present day. Our World in Data is a remarkable project that Max started on his own and worked on little by little in his spare time until it evolved into a full website with plenty of interesting data, presentations, and visualizations to to better understand humanity. The nicest thing is that it provides a quite positive picture of the world and about the many ways that we are improving our conditions. Go to the website (http://ourworldindata.org/) and take a look at War and Violence, Poverty, Global Heath, Etc. On the show we talk about how Max started his work; the process behind finding a topic, collecting, and curating the data; and producing these nice visuals that people can easily understand. We also talk about human biases, persuasion, and how Max learned to build web sites and visualizations. Enjoy the show! -

“I'd give two of my left fingers for this data” - Amanda Cox on the show :) We have the great Amanda Cox from the New York Times on the show this time! Amanda is a graphic editor at NYT and she is behind many of the amazing data graphics that the New York Times has produced in recent years. In the show we talk about her background in statistics and how she ended up at the Times. We discuss how she uses R software to collect, analyze, and visualize data, and her thoughts on other tools. We also talk about how data graphics are produced at NYT, with lots of funny stories. Don't miss the parts about the "what, where, when" of data and the "net joy" concept. Lots a data wisdom in this show! --- This episode is sponsored by Tableau Software, helping people connect to any kind of data, and visualize it on the fly - You can download a free trial at http://tableau.com/datastories – check the new Tableau 9! --- LINKS Hadley Wickham - http://had.co.nz/ R Studio - http://shiny.rstudio.com/ Jake Barton: Local Pr

Hi everyone! We have designer and activist Mushon Zer-Aviv on the show today. Mushon is an NYU ITP graduate and instructor at Shenkar University, Israel. mushon_bw-pic_2015He wrote the very interesting Disinformation Visualization piece for Tactical Tech's Visualizing Information for Advocacy and we decided to invite him to discuss the million different facets of disinformation through visualization. Is data and data visualization bringing some truth or should it always be considered an argument? Is there a way we can mitigate or even prevent disinformation? What strategies can designers use to make their opinions more apparent? These are some of the questions we discuss on the show. And don't miss the part on "data obfuscation," that is, how to use disinformation to increase our privacy! Enjoy this thought-provoking show! This episode is sponsored by Tableau Software, helping people connect to any kind of data, and visualize it on the fly - You can download a free trial at http://tableau.com/datastor

Hi all! We have Miriah Meyer with us in this episode to talk about how to build interactive data visualization tools for scientists and researchers. Miriah is Assistant Professor at University of Utah and one of the leading experts on the process of designing data visualizations for scientific discovery. To know more about her, take a look at her talk at TEDxWaterloo and her projects page, where she has numerous links to applications she developed in biology and other domains (see for instance MizBee and Pathline). On the show we talk about her work on analyzing and understanding the design process: required steps, major pitfalls and tips on how to collaborate with domain scientists. We also talk about her recent fascinating ethnographic work on "Reflections on How Designers Design With Data" and her ongoing work on building visualization tools for poetry! Enjoy the show! LINKS Miriah's Home Page Miriah's Projects TEDxWaterloo - Miriah Meyer - Information Visualization for Scientific Discovery Paper: H

Hi folks! We have Benedikt Groß with us on the show. Benedikt defines himself as a "speculative and computational designer who works antidisciplinarily." Benedikt graduated from the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art and he works for his studio in Stuttgart, Germany. He is the co-author of ‘Generative Design,’ one of the standard books on the topic. In the show we talk about some of his amazing data projects at the intersection of art, design, science, sociology, etc. Aerial Bold, for instance, is a project about searching satellite images to find buildings and geographic features that look like letters. The Big Atlas of LA Pools, is a project about mapping all pools in LA. And Population.io is about showing demographic data in an engaging way and even giving you a prediction of when you are going to die! This is an amazing episode with stories about how Bill Gates crushed Population.io with one tweet, how they published 74 books of pool images totaling about 6000 pages, and how they outs

Hey yo, we have Jen Christiansen from Scientific American with us in DS#52. Jen is art director of information graphics at Scientific American magazine where she is been for about then years and she has a background in natural science illustration from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Science communication is one of our favorite topics and we are so happy to have such an amazing expert like Jen on the show. Jen reveals the nitty gritty of scientific visualization and illustration as experienced by one of the top scientific communication magazines in the world. "How does a scientific piece come to life? Where does an idea for a new piece come from? How do they interact with the scientists to make sure everything they report is accurate and yet accessible for a broad audience? And what does need to be done before an illustration gets ready for print?" We discuss this and many other questions with Jen. Enjoy the show! This episode of Data Stories is sponsored by Tableau. You can download a free tri

Hi Folks! Dietmar Offenhuber We have another great guest on the show. Dietmar Offenhuber visits us to talk about smart cities and visualizing data coming from cities. Dietmar has an interesting background. He has a background in architecture with a Dipl. Ing. from the Technical University Vienna and then he got a MS in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab and a PhD in Urban Planning from MIT. He's also been a key researcher at Ars Electronica Futurelab. Now he is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in the departments of Art + Design and Public Policy, where he does research on the technological and social aspects of smart cities and urban governance. In the show we talk about many of his super interesting projects such as Wegzeit (timespace visualizations of LA) and Trash Track (on tracking and visualizing where garbage goes), and interesting concepts such as Accountability Technologies and Infrastructure Legibility. We also talk about the future of smart cities and what we shoul