1. Data Visualization Joseph Ryan ITS Research Computing November 8, 2012

4. On the agenda. 1. The “magic” hypothesis. 2. Three common goals. 3.How to get started. 4.Visualization tools for the web.

6. Goals

7. Successful visualizations depend on you And your audience And your goal(s) for your visualization

11. A Path

12. Who? What? Should? Who is my audience? Experts? Students? General public? What do I want to tell them? Space or time relationship? Multivariate system? Does this message belong in a visualization?

13. Ben Fry: How to Get Started Get some data. Organize and structure the data. Remove unnecessary(!) data. Use statistical methods to discover patterns. Choose a visualization style. http://www.visual- literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.htmlhttp://www.visual- literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html Refine. Build interaction, if appropriate and possible.

14. Tools

15. Visualization Playgrounds Many Eyes http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/ OpenData http://opendata.socrata.com/ ChartsBin http://chartsbin.com/graph

16. http://code.google.com/apis/chart/interactive/docs/gallery.html Google Chart API

17. D3.js http://d3js.org/

18. Summing Up Make sure data visualization is the right tool for the job Define audience, information to communicate first Choose a visualization Existing examples in knowledge area? Data to support this visualization? Tools and expertise to create it? Have fun Try breaking some rules Ask someone outside of your area for feedback!

19. Thank you! Joseph Ryan ITS Research Computing ryanjd@email.unc.edu Ben Fry’s excellent Visualizing Data provided significant intellectual content to this presentation.