Lots of people wouldn’t really consider tools like ‘ggplot’ true visualization tools, but in some disciplines it’s exactly what’s called for: Simple visualization with no fuss. A talk given by Hadley Wickman, and available online, discusses its use along with the popular statistics package R.
Data analysis, the process of converting data into knowledge, insight and understanding, is a critical part of statistics, but there’s surprisingly little research on it. In this talk I’ll introduce some of my recent work, including a model of data analysis. I’m a passionate advocate of programming that data analysis should be carried out using a programming language, and I’ll justify this by discussing some of the requirement of good data analysis (reproducibility, automation and communication). With these in mind, I’ll introduce you to a powerful set of tools for better understanding data: the statistical programming language R, and the ggplot2 domain specific language (DSL) for visualisation.
Entering the second week of Video Gaming infographics, the massive growth of the Social Games Universe is the subject of today’s selection. Amazing numbers gathered by the folks at Tripwire Magazine and Get Satisfaction, are followed by IT Grunts‘s take at the online gaming reality, and by Intuit‘s look at video game currency.
Like we said in the beginning of the week, a lot of folks – and us, of course – just love video games. But, how many of us know exactly what it takes to make one? Games 2U explains that, and then, from Game are Evil and Maxim, a look at the developers, with some fun stats and facts. To close the week, Travel Insurance featured some of the amazing video game worlds created, followed by some of the most remembered video games villains ever created, brought by Complex.
Recovery.gov, the government website that’s supposed to introduce some transparency into government my showing how the billions in US Stimulus funds is allocated, is rolling out a new feature today that allows users to create and customize their own visualizations of the data.
“This remarkable new feature allows you to chart data submitted by recipients of Recovery funds in ways that are most important to you,” Devaney said. “Recovery Explorer is easy to navigate. If you want to change what is being displayed on a graph or chart, all you have to do is change the category and a new graph or chart with the information you want will be displayed.”
In addition to the new tools on their website, they plan to launch a pair of new iPhone and iPad apps later next month.
I played around with it a bit, at a first it seemed rather restrictive, forcing you to choose one of their pre-built visualizations. However, very quickly I found myself almost overwhelmed with options, finally settling on a basic treemap of the US Army Corps of Engineers spending by State. They is an astounding amount of information and flexibility here, but it can take a bit to find it. It’s lacking any kind of nice Embed option for the Web2.0 crowd, but it allows you to export the data and visualizations into CVS, excel, and a few other formats. Go check it out, and post some of your own finds in the comments!
Enrico Bertini has a great article online that’s a recap of his presentation at Visualizing Europe. Being quite possibly the only CS Visualization Researcher in a room full of non-researchers, he found himself in the minority and wondering how to discuss visualization with them. His solution:
After reflecting a little bit about their content and their frustration I recognized the same frustration in me and decided it was time to react. And my reaction, I decided, had to be a strong one. I realized in fact that the whole problem of visualization usefulness can be removed if we change our mindset. I realized that one of the reason why we ask ourselves whether visualization is useful or not is because we don’t have a clear focus on those problems in which visualization is not just useful, but plainly indispensable.
I’ve done this exercise myself many times for users. Visualization isn’t useful in all situations, as much as we may wish it was. But there are many many fields where it is a requirement, and those fields are typically overlooked because it’s old-hat.
We begin our roundup today with another video game evolution infographic, this time by Online Schools, that also provides us with a rundown on PC gaming. Renters Insurance makes a comparison between PC gaming and consoles, followed by a look at the used games market, by JJ Games, and the size of the Video Game Sales on eBay.
IMSI just fired a volley across Autodesk’s bow with a great new 3D DWG File Viewer app for the iPad. It’s Free, it’s available now, and it has a few nice features not seen in the “official” offering:
TurboViewer is the first to have full screen preview when the DWG is loading. You can pan the view around and once it’s loaded, it stays where you’ve moved it. It automatically switches between single-touch panning and orbit (rotate) depending on the view being 2D or 3D. Perhaps the biggest feature, is that the views are always full-resolution with no regeneration when zooming in and out. All of these act together to make it a surprisingly responsive viewing application.
At the InfoComm event right now in Orlando, FL, Mechdyne is on-hand showing their big CAVE and Display technologies on the floor in DPI’s booth. They’ll be showing 3D datasets, CABELib and VRScape apps, and (a surprise to me) in Unity.
At the show, Mechdyne will demonstrate a new interactive 3D application that helps users easily create virtual worlds with outstanding realism. With this new virtual reality toolkit it is easy to build dynamic 3D environments that can now include scripted behaviors, triggered physics and user interactions. Such 3D content could be used for training, presentations, simulations, research or design reviews.
Now, using Unity to develop 3D applications for the CAVE is a thought that honestly never occurred to me. If it’s true, it could be a great alternative to traditional CAVE systems like CAVELib and VRJuggler.
St Jude Medical has a press release out about a new “Visualization Tool” designed for medical use in electrophysiology labs.
The system includes a 56 inch HD monitor that can display up to eight video images simultaneously with four times the resolution seen in standard 1080p consumer monitors. The VantageView System offers exceptional image quality with greater detail than the monitors typically used in EP labs today. In addition to enhanced image quality, the VantageView System can be seamlessly integrated with the EP lab’s multiple diagnostic and treatment systems, allowing clinicians to customize screen displays and more easily view and control patient and procedure information.
No doubt it’s impressive, and in typical medical fashion (suspected from the ceiling to reduce floor obstruction). But I would love to see some software with it for data fusion (combining data from multiple sources in a registered overlay setting). Oh well, maybe in the next rev.
Entering the second week of Video Gaming infographics, the massive growth of the Social Games Universe is the subject of today’s selection. Amazing numbers gathered by the folks at 
Like we said in the beginning of the week, a lot of folks – and us, of course – just love video games. But, how many of us know exactly what it takes to make one? 
Recovery.gov, the government website that’s supposed to introduce some transparency into government my showing how the billions in US Stimulus funds is allocated, is rolling out a new feature today that allows users to create and customize their own visualizations of the data.
Enrico Bertini has a great article online that’s a recap of his presentation at Visualizing Europe. Being quite possibly the only CS Visualization Researcher in a room full of non-researchers, he found himself in the minority and wondering how to discuss visualization with them. His solution:
We begin our roundup today with another video game evolution infographic, this time by 
IMSI just fired a volley across Autodesk’s bow with a great new 3D DWG File Viewer app for the iPad. It’s Free, it’s available now, and it has a few nice features not seen in the “official” offering:
At the InfoComm event right now in Orlando, FL, Mechdyne is on-hand showing their big CAVE and Display technologies on the floor in DPI’s booth. They’ll be showing 3D datasets, CABELib and VRScape apps, and (a surprise to me) in Unity.
VizWorld.com 
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