Designing Data Visualizations with Noah Iliinsky

In this talk, Noah lays out a great framework for how to determine what question you are actually trying to answer, what data you need (and what you don't) in order to answer that question, and the steps to take through effective visualization to convey the bottom line.

Need help? Talk to bis²!

Stefanie Posavec: finding data everyday



Stefanie Posavec takes a humanistic approach to data – discovering and depicting the "hidden data" in everyday things. Posavec's illustrations depict the patterns behind everyday objects, helping to portray the familiar in a new light.

See more of her beautiful work here.

Article link: "NASA Creates Insanely High-Res Map Of America’s Trees, And Offers A Lesson In Information Design" from Tim Maly at Co.Design

"According to Robert Simmon, art director of NASA’s Earth Observatory, the best science communication goes in layers. You start out with something striking and relatable, and then you invite your audience to go deeper, revealing more and more with each new layer..."

Head to Co.Design to read more of this fantastic article here.

Article Link: Data analytics driving medical breakthroughs by Esther Shein

Some very exciting times in data analytics – helping the health care system process and interpret data in order to discover break-through patterns in patient care and recovery.

"Thanks to a new technology partnership, the hospital is working to use analytics to predict more accurately than ever before which premature babies are at most risk for disease and infection."

"...The technology is giving UOIT the ability to make sense of the data and analyze it in ways that include, they hope, discovering the onset of sepsis and various other conditions before these problems occur, says Dr. Carolyn McGregor, the Canada Research Chair in Health Informatics at UOIT..."

Read more here.

Article Link: Why data visualization matters
by Julie Steele on Radar

"...The best data visualizations are ones that expose something new about the underlying patterns and relationships contained within the data. Understanding those relationships — and being able to observe them — is key to good decision making..."
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Micro Fashion Network: Color
Burak Arikan, Ben Dalton

Micro Fashion Network is a stunning project by Burak Arikan and Ben Dalton.

"A fixed camera and custom software process and store the dominant colors of moving people in Cambridge's busy neighborhoods. Similar colors connected to each other form a large color network over time. As the network grows, the new vertices are connected to existing similar colors; because of this preferential attachment model, we see the power law distribution and the highly connected dense color hubs in the resulting images. In the resulting demonstration, three different artistic representations are put side by side: captured human figures, color information as abstract boxes, and the complex network of colors."

See and read more here.

Twingly Screensaver:
Visualizing The Blogoshpere

"Twingly screensaver is visualizing the global blog activity in real time. Forget RSS readers where you see only what you're interested in. With Twingly screensaver you get a 24/7 stream of all (viewer discretion advised) blog activity, straight to your screen. To use the screensaver you need a PC with Windows and a graphics card supporting OpenGL..."

This is great! We wish our computers would get a chance to rest so we could actually get to see it!

The Dynamic Dimension of Geneva:
Ville Vivante
"...The mobile phone has rapidly become a very essential tool, that we carry with us all the time, everywhere we go. It has become the focus of our communication and information in a hyper-connected world, which tolerates less and less that we disconnect or just don't have immediate access to information. Based on this conclusion the City of Geneva decided to take the challenge to visualize these digital traces created by our mobile phones. The objective of this installation is to make this data visible and allow you to explore these streams of connected people around the city, in their everyday life..."

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What is BIS² gameVis?



gameViz is a powerful, easy-to-use, gaming industry data visualization solution that allows gaming operators to directly query their data, and enable them to see what they need to do.

Visualize your data! 

Diagram of the Causes of Mortality by Florence Nightingale

Professor Friendly looks at Florence Nightingale's Coxcomb diagrams:

"Florence Nightingale is remembered as the mother of modern nursing. But few realize that her place in history is at least partly linked to her use, following William Farr, Playfair and others, of graphical methods to convey complex statistical information dramatically to a broad audience..."

"...This figure makes it abundantly clear that far more deaths were attributable to non-battle causes ("preventable causes") than to battle-related causes..."

See the beautiful remake here and read more here.