Data Stories

[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal. And thank you!] Have you heard of the “Data Visualization Society”? This is a new initiative started by visualization designers Amy Cesal, Mollie Pettit and Elijah Meeks. The DVS started with a simple form and a Slack channel and experienced in a few days a massive level of interest (more than 3000 people signed-up in a matter of days). On the show we talk with the founders to know more about how this happened, interesting stories about what people are doing within DVS and plans for the future. Enjoy the show! Update: After the recording took place, DVS also launched their annual data visualization community survey. Make sure to take part (before June 15, 2019). Related episodes Catching up with Amanda Makulec

[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal. And thank you!] We have Tim Dwyer on the show to talk about Immersive Analytics, the use of virtual reality and other immersive technology to analyze and present data visually. Tim is a Professor of Data Visualisation and Immersive Analytics at Monash University in Melbourne and his research focuses on the human and technological aspect of immersive analytics. On the show we talk about what immersive analytics is, what are the major opportunities and challenges and how one gets started experimenting with it. Tim also talks about some of the specific projects he and his collaborators developed on his lab. Links Book: Immersive AnalyticsHoloLens 2Magic LeapMilgram’s article on Augmented RealityVideos of Tim’s research work:Origin-Destination Flow MapsScaptics and Highlight-PlanesMaps and Globes in VRImAxes – Immersive Multivariate Data Visualisation in Virtual RealityIATK – An Immersive Analytics Toolkit Tim Dwyer talks about their work with visualizing 3D data and using vibro-tactile feedback.

[Our podcast is fully listener-supported. That’s why you don’t have to listen to ads! Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal. And thank you!] How do you represent data with sound instead of graphical properties? Is it even possible? It turns out that it’s not only possible, but there is an entire field — called sonification — that is dedicated to representing data with sound. In this episode we are joined by Hannah Davis, a data visualization and sonification expert, to talk about how sonification works and how she has gone about making her own amazing sonification projects, which create musical pieces based on data. Get your ears ready! This time you are not only going to listen to our voices but also to some really interesting sounds! P.S. We’ve actually touched upon sonification once before in Data Stories. Check out our episode with Scott Hughes on the sonification of black holes. LINKS Moritz’s CourseBeyond Heatmaps: Course on climate change visualization at the Digital Media program at HfK BremenListen: Apple Blossom is Shifting by Katja Striedelmeyer We talked about sonification once before!http://datastori.es/75-sonification-scott-hughes/ Sonification examplesFractions of a secondMatch 104 – James Murphy Remix | The US Open Sessions HannahHannah’s web site: http://www.hannahishere.comHannah’s talk at Eyeo 2018Article: Subjective Data Hannah’s projects Sonified DataTransProse (Peter Pan, The Road, Clockwork Orange)Text to Music GeneratorAt the Louvre: Human-Computer SymphonyUFO Data (file 1, file 2)Percival with SynthBeats laptop orchestraLaughing room How folks can get started with sonificationhttp://app.twotone.ioJsmidgen: https://github.com/dingram/jsmidgenMidiutil: https://pypi.org/project/MIDIUtil/Workshop on Turning Data into Sound and MusicMake a Twitter Audio Bot That Composes a Song Based on a Tweet

[There are no ads on Data Stories because we’re listener-supported; please consider contributing to the show! Oh…and now Data Stories is on Instagram!] Today we are joined by Cameron Beccario who created the immensely impressive Earth visualization — a beautiful, geeky, mesmerizing look at the small blue marble we call home. On the show Cameron tells us all about the story behind the project, its evolution, and its reception — plus, at the end, we have a bonus chat about the state of data visualization in Japan. Enjoy the show! Links http://earth.nullschool.net Data Visualization Society Cameron’s Github repository Fernanda Viegas’ & Martin Wattenberg’s Wind Map Data Viz Japan Tohoku earthquake visualization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obsw9qiBnjo Cameron describes what happens when you make a data viz image that’s just too cool.

[There are no ads on Data Stories because we’re listener-supported; please consider contributing to the show! Oh…and now Data Stories is on Instagram!] We have Pedro Cruz and John Wihbey on the show to talk about their beautiful project, the Simulated Dendrochronology of U.S. Immigration. There are many ways that immigration can be represented visually, but Pedro and John came up with a very compelling one: they use the metaphor of tree rings to show how migration patterns of people to the United States have changed over time. The final piece is utterly beautiful and evocative: we are the product of many layers of immigration. On the show we talk about how they came up with this idea, the implementation of the visualization, the attempts they tried before producing the final version, and the role of metaphors in visualization. Make sure you take a closer look at the visualization before listening! And enjoy the show! Links Project Page and VideoPedro CruzJohn WihbeyGeorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live ByAndrew Ortony,  “Metaphor and Representation” in Metaphor and ThoughtDonna Cox “The Art and Science of Visualization: Metaphorical Maps and Cultural Models”John’s upcoming book: The Social Fact (MIT Press, April 2019)

[Our podcast is fully supported by our listeners. Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal. And thanks!] Oh dashboards… dashboards… what are they? For some, they are just ugly examples of bad visualization design (speed dials anyone?). For others, they are a first citizen of the data visualization world that deserve to be learned, studied, and understood. To dig into this debate, we have Lyn Bartram of Simon Fraser University and Alper Sarikaya of Microsoft Power BI on the show to talk about an exciting research project they developed. Their research seeks to build a better picture of what dashboard are and how they are used “in the wild.” The results are summarized in a paper they wrote with their colleagues from Tableau and Honeycomb.io: What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Dashboards? On the show we talk about how the project got started, what they discovered by analyzing a large corpus of dashboards, and the many ramifications of their research. Enjoy the show! Links Project page Supplemental material with images of all the dashboards the team analyzed (zip) http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DS-135-promo.mp4

[Our podcast is fully supported by our listeners. Please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon or sending us a one-time donation through Paypal. Thanks!] What is uncertainty? Why is it important to take it into account when designing data visualizations? And how do you actually do so? We explore these and other questions with Jessica Hullman of Northwestern University and Matthew Kay of the University of Michigan. Jessica and Matt have written many publications on the topic that help orient us to the intricate world of uncertainty, probabilities, and their relevance to data visualization. We hope you enjoy the show! Links National Institute for Standards (NIST): “Measurement Error” Useful material to learn about uncertainty visualization: Leland Wilkinson’s The Grammar of Graphics (chapter on uncertainty) Howard Wainer’s Picturing the Uncertain World Richard McElreath’s Statistical Rethinking Claus Wilke’s uncertainty vis chapter Matt’s github of uncertainty examples Hypothetical Outcome Plots Hypothetical Outcome Plots: Experiencing the Uncertain Paper: Hypothetical Outcome Plots Outperform Error Bars and Violin Plots for Inferences about Reliability of Variable Ordering Paper: Hypothetical Outcome Plots Help Untrained Observers Judge Trends in Ambiguous Data Gregor Aisch on: “Why we used jittery gauges in our live election forecast” Ensembles – Visualizing storms Paper: Visualizing Uncertain Tropical Cyclone Predictions using Representative Samples from Ensembles of Forecast Tracks Visual variables used to show probability/confidence Related: Value suppressing color palettes Related: Sketchy rendering Static depictions of outcomes (quantile dotplot) Paper: When (ish) is My Bus? User-centered Visualizations of Uncertainty in Everyday, Mobile Predictive Systems. Paper: Uncertainty Displays Using Quantile Dotplots or CDFs Improve Transit Decision-Making   Paper: Imagining Replications: Graphical Prediction & Discrete Visualizations Improve Recall & Estimation of Effect Uncertainty Evaluation Paper: In Pursuit of Error: A Survey of Uncertainty Visualization Evaluation. http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/DS-134-promo.mp4

[Thinking of gift-giving this holiday season? Consider a gift to Data Stories! You can join our growing community of Patreons or make a one-time donation to us on Paypal.] Here we go! Another year has passed and lots has happened in the data visualization world. This time we decided to scramble things up again with a new annual review format: five podcasters (including ourselves!) reflecting back on year 2018. We’re lucky to be joined by Jon Schwabish from PolicyViz, Alli Torban from DataViz Today, and Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic from Storytelling with Data. This was a long chat! But we had a lot to cover: major trends, favorite projects, new tools, and standout people, companies, studios, conferences, books, and blogs. There is a lot to learn there. Don’t miss our long list of links below! As always, thanks for following along with us this year. And special thanks go to our supporters and to Destry and Florian for their amazing work behind the scenes. We wish you all Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! Links Major Trends Makeover Monday Storytelling With Data Challenge Help Me Viz IEEE VIS 2018 Favorite Projects Flowing Data’s “Divorce and Occupation” The New York Times’s “Tracing a Meme From the Internet’s Fringe to a Republican Slogan” Simulated Dendrochronology of U.S. Immigration Geoff Boeing’s “Comparing US City Street Orientations” New York Times’s “U.S. House Election Results 2018” Pudding’s “Women’s Pockets are Inferior” Augmented reality on The Weather Channel RJ Andrews’s “Picturing the Great Migration” Noteworthy Tools Vizzlo, Venngage, Infogram Data Illustrator, Lincoln, Charticulator Altair Standout People, Companies and Studios Topi Tjukanov Elijah Meeks’s “3rd Wave Data Visualization” Lisa Charlotte Rost Neil Richards Kat Greenbrook The Pudding Valentina d’Efilippo Conferences Aaron Williams at OpenVis Shan Carter at OpenVis Tapestry videos of talks Books Andy Kriebel & Eva Murray, MakeoverMonday Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps Sandra Rendgen, The Minard System: The Complete Statistical Graphics of Charles-Joseph Minard Catherine D’Ignazio & Lauren Klein, Data Feminism Scott Berinato, Good Charts Workbook: Tips, Tools, and Exercises for Making Better Data Visualizations Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, Observe, Collect, Draw! A Visual Journal Books Coming in 2019 RJ Andrews, Info We Trust: How to Inspire the World with Data Kieran Healy, Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction Blogs Multiple Views: Visualization Research Explained Maarten Lambrechts: Xenographics Pew Research, Data Labs Flourish tool blog PolicyViz Jonathan’s card game http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Year-Review-promo.mp4

[Thinking of gift-giving this holiday season? Consider a gift to Data Stories! You can join our growing community of Patreons or make a one-time donation to us on Paypal.] We have data visualization freelancer and old friend-of-the-podcast Andy Kirk with us to talk about a new generation of data viz tools. You may not have noticed yet, but there are a quite a few nice new tools in development — and they all seem to have one thing in common: granting more artistic freedom to users while requiring less programming. On the show we start by talking about the precursors to this generation of tools, such as Lyra and Data Driven Guides. We then pivot to the latest developments including Charticulator, Adobe’s Data Illustrator, and Lincoln. What do these tools make possible that is still impossible or not so easy to do with the existing tools? What are their more exciting features? How do they differ in the way that they work? Why are we observing this trend now? And are they ultimately going to become real products? We ponder these and other questions on the show with Andy. Enjoy listening! Links Multiple Views: Visualization Research Explained Andy Kirk Visualisingdata’s list of data visualization tools Tableau Lyra Data Driven Guides Brett Victor’s Drawing Dynamic Visualizations Data Stories episode on Lyra Charticulator Adobe’s Data Illustrator Lincoln Open Refine morph.graphics http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/DS-132-promo-Made-by-Headliner.mp4 Related episodes Visualizing Data with RAWDatawrapper with Lisa C. Rost and Gregor AischFlourish with Duncan Clark

[Thinking of gift-giving this holiday season? Consider a gift to Data Stories! You can join our growing community of Patreons or make a one-time donation to us on Paypal.] “Would you define this as a dashboard?” The question provoked quite a reaction! In this episode, we talk about Peak Spotting, a new data visualization tool designed to help capacity managers at the German railway Deutsche Bahn handle passenger loads within the train system. We recorded the episode live in Berlin, all together in the same room, with Moritz, the creative lead of the project, as well as the project’s other collaborators: project director Christian Au, technical lead Stephan Thiel, and designer Christian Laesser. We talk about how the project started, the process the team followed to design the tool, how people at the German railway are using it, finding innovation within big companies, and the role of visualization in the movement towards automation. Enjoy the show! Links Christian Au Christian Laesser Stephan Thiel Moritz’s OpenVisConf keynote Moritz’s writeup of the project Studio NAND’s writeup of the project Christian Laesser’s writeup of the project Fast Company’s coverage of the project http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Untitled-Project-Made-by-Headliner-3.mp4