Tableau Software has taken their new Tableau Public and used it to compile the March Madness data into an interactive combination of a scatter chart and bar graph.
March Madness is here! Like millions of Americans, I sat down today and realized I had no idea who was going to come out on top. Who honestly has time to be an expert on every team that has a chance? I mean, North Iowa? Luckily, stats are readily available from the NCAA and I downloaded the offensive and defensive FG % to make this comparison tool.
Recently we told you about Edward Tufte being appointed to be an adviser to the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. We have recently run across two articles that have been posted talking about Edward Tufte. First up, the New York Times talks to Tufte about his appointment:
“Political practice today too often skips right by evidence,” he said by e-mail. “When I listen to True Believers (left or right) talk about the problems that governments are seeking to solve, I keep muttering to myself, ‘How boring, it’s more complicated than that.’ And those who best know that it’s more complicated than that are public servants.”
The second article is an interview of Edward Tufte from On the Media (NPR):
BOB GARFIELD: The data among different agencies doesn’t necessarily conform. They have different ways of measuring appropriations and expenditures, and it’s really hard to get a fix. There’s not only apples and oranges, but there’s grapefruits and strawberries and kumquats out there. What’s a graphics guru to do?
EDWARD TUFTE: Probably the first thing that most people do when they go to the website is they type in their zip code, and up pops up all the stimulus projects in their area. And what’s interesting about this, it’s a huge database and the particular viewer has no interest in 99 percent of it, but via the zip code they can make it special for them, as can everybody else.
As we reported earlier, Nvidia is touring the nation with Panasonic on a 15 city road trip. They are demonstrating 3DTV Play to show how well it performs. In essence, they want to show off 3DTV Play to get hardcore gamers to go out an and buy Panasonic 3D TVs and Nvidia hardware to play their games. While I think that the idea is cool, I cannot see going out to pay extra for it. Nvidia has uploaded some of the photos of the event in Phoenix, Arizona to Flicker, as well as photos from other events.
NVidia has updated their website to include all of the powerpoint slides, papers, and videos from their GDC2010 presentations. Some of these we have already covered (like yesterday’s APEX videos), but the full selection is now online (or coming online, actually) at NVidia’s website.
We want to thank all of you that attended the 2010 Game Developers Conference, and want to offer a special thanks to those that stopped by our booth in the Main Hall! We hope you enjoyed the variety of presentations we had to offer, and welcome any feedback or suggestions you can offer to us for next year through our NVIDIA Developer Forums. We look forward to seeing you next year!
Visual Economics has posted an infographic on the misery index and mapped it against the party of Congress that is in power. The misery index is the combination of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Right now we have a low inflation rate, and high unemployment. Back in the 1970s and 1980s we had a high combination of both, until Paul Volcker raised interest rates sky high and killed inflation. However, as I have said before, Correlation does not imply Causation.
A Kármán vortex street is a pattern of swirling vortices caused by the unsteady separation of flow over a cylinder, sphere, or in this case, the mountains of an island chain. NASA’s MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) captured this image of a Vortex Street off the Aleutian Islands.
You can click on the image to the right to see a high-resolution image where every pixel is about 1 km. The image size is 1,200 x 1,600 pixels and is a 817 KB Jpeg image. However, if you go to the site below, you can see a very high-resolution image where every pixel is about 250 meters. That image size is 4,800 x 6,400 pixels and is a 6.9 MB Jpeg image.
Interesting cloud patterns were visible over the Aleutian Islands in this image, captured by the MODIS on the Aqua satellite on March 14, 2010. Turbulence, caused by the wind passing over the highest points of the islands, is producing the pronounced eddies that swirl the clouds into a pattern called a vortex “street”. In this image, the clouds have also aligned in parallel rows or streets. Cloud streets form when low-level winds move between and over obstacles causing the clouds to line up into rows (much like streets) that match the direction of the winds. At the point where the clouds first form streets, they’re very narrow and well-defined. But as they age, they lose their definition, and begin to spread out and rejoin each other into a larger cloud mass.
We’ve mentioned Veronica Butler-Borrer before, as Pooky Amsterdam, popular inworld celebrity of SecondLife. She has a new guest-article up on the AllVirtual blog discussing SecondLife, and other virtual worlds, can be an integral part of business through the integration of VoIP, travel, video, and more into a single free platform. In particular, she references a portion of a case study called “Virtual World Simulation training Prepares Real Guards on the US-Canadian Border: Loyalist College in Second Life” (View Online Here).
Before September 11, 2001, Customs and Immigration students at Loyalist College spent three weeks closely tailing professional border guards to experience the daily routine of their future job. In a post-911 environment however, this was no longer allowed. Training suffered until the Director of Educational Technology at Loyalist College catalyzed a virtual border crossing simulation in Second Life for Loyalist students.
The amazing results of the training and simulation program have led to significantly improved grades on students’ critical skills tests, taking scores from a 56% success in 2007, to 95% at the end of 2008 after the simulation was instituted.
Robin Richards has posted a new infographic that he designed for MeetTheBoss.tv. Previously he created a graphic on the FedEx Universe. Last time he wanted to show figures he obtained about McDonalds. Now he wants to know “Which Dreamworks Character are you?” I hate to admit it, but I have never watched any of these movies all the way through.
Found working backwards this way was best, it allowed a better understanding of the personality type and how to get to it. Have been wanting to create this style of flowchart graphic for a while (thinking it would be fun and not to difficult) however the end product looks simple, but the process to get to that end was hard (how wrong I was). Working out the questions and linking all the characters together so it flowed and made sense was frustrating and enjoyable at the same time. Changing anything was a big deal, once it linked and flowed. But I loved it, and want to do another when I get the chance. I’m the Penguin’s by the way, let me know which one you are.
As visualization scientists and visual effects artists, we spend much of our time trying to use math to recreate physical nature and effects, we don’t spend much time trying to derive math from nature. A new short film from Cristobal Vila and Eterea studios aims do to just that by showing us how the fibonnaci sequence, the golden ratio, and other famous geometric and mathematical constructs can be found in objects like shells, leaves, flowers, and insects. Some beautiful CG combined with gorgeous music and compositing effects brings this to the screen.
See it below, and then be sure to read his writeup about the various formula’s within the film.
Tableau Software has taken their new Tableau Public and used it to compile the March Madness data into an interactive combination of a scatter chart and bar graph.
Here’s today’s link roundup:
NVidia has updated their website to include all of the powerpoint slides, papers, and videos from their GDC2010 presentations. Some of these we have already covered (like yesterday’s APEX videos), but the full selection is now online (or coming online, actually) at NVidia’s website.
We’ve mentioned Veronica Butler-Borrer before, as Pooky Amsterdam, popular inworld celebrity of SecondLife. She has a new guest-article up on the AllVirtual blog discussing SecondLife, and other virtual worlds, can be an integral part of business through the integration of VoIP, travel, video, and more into a single free platform. In particular, she references a portion of a case study called “
As visualization scientists and visual effects artists, we spend much of our time trying to use math to recreate physical nature and effects, we don’t spend much time trying to derive math from nature. A new short film from Cristobal Vila and 
VizWorld.com 
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