Diagram Software - The Best Choice for Diagramming
All-in-one diagram software that makes it perfect for the following diagram software types. What's the diagram solution? Buy one diagram software that suits one group but forces the other to compromise and make do?
Introducing the PivotViewer Control for Silverlight
The Silverlight PivotViewer control is now available. Jesse Liberty and I have been working closely with the Live Labs team to help transition the PivotViewer control out as a real product for the developer community. I'm excited to say that the control is no longer a lab project, but is now out and available for developers!
A Protovis Primer, Part 1
Protovis is a very powerful visualization toolkit. Part of what makes it special is that it is written in JavaScript and runs in the browser without the need for any plugins. Its clever use of JavaScript’s language features makes it very elegant, but it can also be confusing to people who are not familiar with functional programming concepts and the finer points of JavaScript. This multi-part tutorial shows how to create a visualization (my interactive Presidents Chart) in Protovis, and explains the concepts that are involved along the way. This introduction is based on my experiences with using Protovis in my Visualization and Visual Communication class earlier this spring. While the concepts involved are really not that difficult, they are rather foreign to students who have not been exposed to functional programming.
Maps with R (I)
This is the first post of a short series to show some code I have learnt to produce maps with R. Some time ago I found this infographic from The New York Times (via this page) and I wondered how a multivariate choropleth map could be produced with R. Here is the code I have arranged to show the results of the last Spanish general elections in a similar fashion. Some packages are needed:
Data visualization books: How to start your personal library The Excel Charts Blog
There are many approaches to data visualization. Take well-know authors like Tufte, Cleveland, Ware, Few, Bertin or McCandless. There is some overlap, but they all approach data visualization from a different angle. That’s great news for you: this means that you can come up with a unique point of view that reflects your interests and needs. I suppose the books you buy are consistent with that view.
Data Visualization: Modern Approaches
About The Author Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing or speaking at a conference, he’s most probably running … More about Vitaly Friedman … Data presentation can be beautiful, elegant and descriptive.
Protovis
Protovis composes custom views of data with simple marks such as bars and dots. Unlike low-level graphics libraries that quickly become tedious for visualization, Protovis defines marks through dynamic properties that encode data, allowing inheritance, scales and layouts to simplify construction. Protovis is free and open-source, provided under the BSD License. It uses JavaScript and SVG for web-native visualizations; no plugin required (though you will need a modern web browser)! Although programming experience is helpful, Protovis is mostly declarative and designed to be learned by example.
Visualizing Facebook Friends: Eye Candy in R
Earlier this week I published a data visualization on the Facebook Engineering blog which, to my surprise, has received a lot of media coverage I’ve received a lot comments about the image, many asking for more details on how I created it. When I tell people I used R, the reaction I get is roughly what I would expect if I told them I made it with Microsoft Paint and a bottle of Jägermeister. Some people even questioned whether it was actually done in R. The truth is, aside from the addition of the logo and date text, the image was produced entirely with about 150 lines of R code with no external dependencies.
What is Visualization? A Definition
What is a visualization? The word is problematic, and there have been very few definitions that try to define this field we are working in. More importantly: what is not a visualization? It is easy to argue that anything visual is a visualization in some way – but does that mean anything? Here is a definition of visualization and a few examples to illustrate the different criteria.
