on academia

and

data visualization

A discourse…

Ben Jones

Sr. Mgr, Tableau Public

@DataRemixed

May 28, 2014

A Canadian from Los Angeles who started a

dataviz website

…and moved to Washington to join Tableau

About Ben

Free software to quickly create and

share interactive data graphics on the web

http://www.nhl.com/ice/careerstats.htm

Gathering

Structuring

Analyzing

Communicating

Tables, Spreadsheets, Lists

Charts, Graphs, Maps

INFORMATION INSIGHT

http://dataremixed.com website stats, Aug 2011 – May 2014

Source | Google Analytics

why data visualization?

because visualization amplifies cognition… first for you, then for your audience

question gathering

data

structuring

data

exploring

data

communicating

data

The Data Discovery Horse Track

Anscomb’s Quartet

data visualization isn’t new

it’s been going on for centuries now

Joseph Priestley, 1769

William Playfair, 1786

John Snow, 1854

Florence Nightingale, 1858

visualization is for academics

some of the most influential findings have been communicated visually

“What motivates me now

are the ideas I developed

10, 20 or 30 years ago,

and the feeling that

these ideas may be lost

if I don’t push them a

little bit further.”

-Benoit Mandlebrot

UW: West, Bergstrom, Jacquet, Brooks, Aragon

http://www.eigenfactor.org/gender/#

Visualization can be both

c l e a r

AND

beautiful

Data should be visually appealing

Data should be easy to understand

but visualization isn’t a panacea

just because you visualize something, doesn’t mean it’s intelligible

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kühlschifffahrt

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pie_chart_of_US_population_by_state.png

http://flowingdata.com/2014/04/04/fox-news-bar-chart-gets-it-wrong/

http://phylonetworks.blogspot.com/2012/03/biological-versus-phylogenetic-networks.html

Protein interaction network

and hey, visualization can be fun

just because you visualize something, doesn’t mean it’s intelligible

What does

this remind

you of?

Via Christopher Ingraham Twitter: @_cingraham

Oh, and you can only

use exploded pies

when telling jokes…

but it can also be heavy-hitting

some facts about our world are very grave

visualization is an opportunity for

academic research

getting your ideas out there, making them stick

3 Classic Problems:

The Technical Problem

The Semantic Problem

The Effectiveness Problem

C. Shannon W. Weaver

UW: West, Bergstrom, Jacquet, Brooks, Aragon

http://www.eigenfactor.org/gender/#

My message to academic researchers:

Don’t just communicate your findings with your peers using

jargon.

Use visualization to communicate your findings with the world.

There is an appetite for your ideas. If you don’t push them, who

will?