Data Stories

On the show this week we have  Michael Gonchar of the New York Times Learning Network and Sharon Hessney of the American Statistical Association to talk about the New York Times’s project, “What’s Going On In This Graph?” The project aims to improve students’ visual literacy by analyzing a specific chart and participating in online discussions. Each month the New York Times publishes a new chart and ask students to discuss it by answering a series of questions: What do you notice? What do you wonder? Are there items you notice that answer what you wonder? Where could you find the answers to what you wonder? On the show we talk about how the project was born, how students participate in the process, what they learn, and our guests’ plans for the future of the series. We strongly encourage you to participate! It’s fun and useful! Enjoy the show! [If you enjoy Data Stories, consider supporting us on Patreon. The show is now fully funded by our listeners!] Links New York Times Learning Network New York Times’s What’s Going On In This Graph? New York Times’s What’s Going On In This Picture? The 3 graphs published so far: “Houston May Get 50 Inches of Rain. How Long Does It Take Your City to Get that Much?” “Is Sushi Healthy? What About Granola Where Americans and Nutritionists Disagree” “Labor Shortage Gives Wonders an Edge” http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/wgoitg.m4v

[If you enjoy Data Stories, consider supporting us on Patreon. The show is now fully funded by our listeners!] We have Catherine D’Ignazio on the show this week to talk about feminist data visualization. Catherine is Assistant Professor of Data Visualization and Civic Media at Emerson College, where she works across art, design, science and research. On the show Catherine explains how feminist theory can be used as a lens to look at some interesting problems in visualization and data analysis in general. We also talk about the struggle between objectivity and relativism, methods to apply the guidelines proposed by Catherine to data visualization work, and some super interesting projects she has developed over the years. Enjoy the show!     http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/feminist-vis-promo.m4v Links Catherine’s project Boston Coastline: Future Past Catherine’s project The Babbling Brook Catherine’s “What Would Feminist Data Visualization Look Like?” Donna Haraway’s “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” Giorgia Lupi’s “Manifesto for Data Humanism“ Michelle Borkin’s What Makes Data Visualization Memorable Sandra Harding’s “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is ‘Strong Objectivity’?” Catherine d’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein’s “Feminist Data Visualization” More on Catherine’s “Data Biographies” teaching exercise Lauren F. Klein’s “Feminist Data Visualization; Or, the Shape of History”

[Like Data Stories? Consider supporting us on Patreon!]         We have Jessica Hullman from the University of Washington and Robert Kosara from Tableau Software on the show this week to share highlights from the IEEE VIS 2017 conference, which took place in Phoenix, Arizona in early October. On the show, we discuss a number of interesting papers, panels and talks that were given at the conference. Of course, this is just a tiny portion of what took place in Phoenix! If you want to know more, take a look at the conference website. http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ieee-vis-promo.m4v     Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Jessica Hullman Robert Kosara Paper: “Blinded with Science or Informed by Charts?” Paper: “Keeping Multiple Views Consistent” Paper: “Uncertainty Visualization by Representative Sampling from Prediction Ensembles” The New York Times on understanding and visualizing uncertainty The New York Times: “You draw it” Paper: “Modeling Color Difference for Visualization Design” Paper: “Data Through Others’ Eyes” Paper: “Visualizing Dataflow Graphs of Deep Learning Models in TensorFlow” Panel: “Diversity in Visualization” (YouTube video) The Grace Hopper Celebration for women in technology Art Program and Giorgia Lupi’s capstone Giorgia Lupi’s capstone video Panel: InfoVis x Vision Science Robert’s six-part coverage of the conference Steve Haroz’s writeup of the conference Related episodes Highlights from IEEE VIS'19 with Tamara Munzner and Robert KosaraHighlights from IEEE VIS'22 with Tamara Munzner

[Help us run the show by supporting us on Patreon!] This episode we have Dan McGinn from Imperial College in London on the show to talk about visualizing Bitcoin data. Dan and his colleagues have developed real-time visualizations of transactions in the “blockchain,” the public ledger used by Bitcoin to create and document transactions. The visualizations are displayed in their Data Observatory, a beautiful, high-resolution, 64-screen distributed rendering of a cluster with a canvas of 132M pixels. On the show we discuss Bitcoin and how it works, the visualizations Dan and his colleagues have developed, and what can be done next to visualize cryptocurrencies. Enjoy the show!   Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Dan McGinn YouTube video showing the visualizations in action Paper: Visualizing Dynamic Bitcoin Transaction Patterns Financial Times: Inside Europe’s biggest data visualisation laboratory http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/bitcoin.m4v Related episodes Data Visualization at Capital One with Kim Rees and Steph Hay

In this episode, we have artist and sculptor Adrien Segal on the show to talk about her beautiful, thoughtful, and engaging data sculptures. Adrien is based in Oakland, California. Her work has been exhibited internationally in galleries and museums around the world. On the show, we talk about some her great artwork, including Tidal Datum, which depicts tidal charts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Grewingk Glacier, an ice sculpture depicting “the shape of the terminus of Grewingk Glacier as it has receded over 150 years time.” We also talk about the process Adrien follows for her sculpture production, her thinking about work in physical versus digital materials, the boundaries between art and science, and how listeners might experiment with their own data sculptures! Enjoy the show! A minor correction to the show: It takes 29 days for the moon to go around the Earth, not the Sun.  Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Adrien Segal Adrien’s project Tidal Datum Adrien’s project Grewingk Glacier NOAA tidal data The Sutro Baths Rhino for 3D modeling Artist Marc Quinn’s Self series The DIKW pyramid: data, information, knowledge and wisdom Autodesk 123D Catch Smell researcher Sissel Tolaas http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/adrien.m4v Related episodes Data Art and Visual Programming with Marcin Ignac from Variable

[Help us run the show by supporting us on Patreon!] This week we have Krist Wongsuphasawat on Data Stories to talk about visualization projects at Twitter. Krist has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, where he worked with Ben Shneiderman. Most recently, he has been a Data Visualization Scientist at Twitter since 2012. On the show, Krist describes the kinds of projects that the visualization team at Twitter develops. He also walks us through a few of the most popular of these projects, including their famous visualization of Game of Thrones. Also, don’t miss Krist’s masterpiece post “How I carefully crafted a truly terrible data visualization” Enjoy the show! Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Wahl 2Q17  Enrico’s website Krist’s website  The Twitter interactive page “How every #GameOfThrones episode has been discussed on Twitter” Twitter platform for developers  Labella.js Twitter D3Kit  Krist’s post: “How I carefully crafted a truly terrible data visualization”  Related Episodes Data Stories 11: emoto with Stephan Thiel from Studio NAND Data Stories 54: Designing Exploratory Data Visualization Tools with Miriah Meyer Data Stories 62: Text Visualization: Past, Present and Future with Chris Collins Data Stories 95: Challenges of Being a Vis Professional in Industry with Elijah Meeks http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/krist-promo.m4v

[If you enjoy our show, consider supporting us on Patreon! You pay the amount of one or two lattes for each episode we publish every two weeks.] In our latest episode, we talk about “C’est La Vis,” a research project developed to teach visualization at the elementary school level. We have two of the project researchers on the show, Basak Alper from NASA JPL and Nathalie Riche from Microsoft Research, to tell us all about it. On the show we talk about the inception of the project, the findings they discovered by both talking to teachers and analyzing visualization materials used in schools, and the “C’est la Vis” prototype they have developed as a way to teach visualization to kids. Enjoy the show! Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Basak Alper Nathalie Riche “C’est la Vis” project page Project page on GitHub Research paper: Alper, B., Henry Riche, N., Chevalier, F., Boy, J., and Sezgin, M. Visualization Literacy at Elementary School. In Proceedings of CHI 2017. http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/cest-la-vis-promo.m4v Related episodes Data Visualization Literacy with Jeremy Boy, Helen Kennedy and Andy KirkTouch Graphics with Steve LandauData Is Personal with Evan Peck

[If you enjoy our show, please consider supporting us on Patreon! For the price of one or two lattes per episode, which we publish every two weeks, you can help make sure that Data Stories keeps getting made!] This week we have Nicky Case on the show to talk about “explorable explanations,” interactive simulations that help people understand complex ideas. Nicky has developed a whole set of projects over the years, including the popular “Parable Of The Polygons,” which describes how small biases can lead to segregation, and “To Build A Better Ballot,” which demonstrates the impact of various types of voting ballots. On the show we talk about both of these projects in detail, the definition of explorable explanations, how simulation and interaction might play a role in visualization, and the future of this kind of project. Enjoy the show! Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Nicky’s Patreon page Project: Parable Of The Polygons Project: To Build A Better Ballot Nicky’s guide to explorable explanations Loopy (a tool to create explorables) Collection of explorable explanations Github Pages (to create web pages with iframes) Moral Machine (explorable on the “trolley problem”) Syrian Journey: Choose your own escape route (explorable on Syrian refugees) http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Nicky-Case-promo.m4v

*** SUPPORT US ON PATREON! If you enjoy our show, consider supporting us on Patreon! You can contribute just the cost of one or two lattes for each episode we publish every two weeks. *** In this episode we have famous cartoonist and comics theorist Scott McCloud. Scott wrote the popular books Understanding Comics (1993), Reinventing Comics (2000), and Making Comics (2006), which explain the theory and practice behind making comics and telling stories visually. Scott has gained a big following among data visualization designers over the years. By following the strategies he describes in his books, one can develop rich narratives that are useful in data visualization as well as comics. On the show we talk about his books, the power of frames, Scott’s definition of story, virtual reality, and what people in vis can learn from comic artists. Enjoy the show!     Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Scott McCloud Scott’s TED Talk Scott’s wikipedia page Scott’s comic on Google Chrome Book: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art Tilt Brush (integrating virtual reality) http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/scott-mccloud-promo.m4v

[If you enjoy the show, consider supporting us on Patreon! You pay a small fee for each episode we publish.] In this episode, we have Michael Correll and Jeff Heer from the University of Washington to talk about a novel visualization technique they developed called “Surprise Maps”: a new kind of map which visualizes what is most surprising in a dataset. Using their own words: “The idea behind Surprise Maps is that when we look at data, we often have various models of expectation: things we expect to see, or not see, in our data. If we have these models, we can also measure deviation or difference from these models. This deviation is the unexpected, the data that surprise us.” On the show we talk about how they came up with the idea for Surprise Maps, how they work, and potential applications and extensions for the technique. Enjoy the show!           Data Stories is brought to you by Qlik. Are you missing out on meaningful relationships hidden in your data? Unlock the whole story with Qlik Sense through personalized visualizations and dynamic dashboards which you can download for free at qlik.de/datastories. Links Medium post on Surprise Maps InfoVis 2016 Paper on Surprise Maps (PDF) Github Repository: https://github.com/uwdata/bayesian-surprise Formal Bayesian Theory of Surprise: http://ilab.usc.edu/surprise/ Example of application of Surprise Maps at CensusMapper http://datastori.es/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/surprise-maps-promo.m4v