The Visual Display of Data
This post was written by Philip Lane
OK, this is a digression but it is occasionally good to escape from the Irish economy.
One of the lessons we try to instill in our students is the importance of the visual display of data, rather than relying too much on text. Via Turbulence Ahead, I came across this really striking example.
Tags: visual display of data
November 9th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
great find. Anybody else think the haemoglobin looks like a buncha hearts stuck together?
In a more serious note, one of the few books on my shelf that I regularly look at is Ed Tufte “visual display of quantiative information”. Buy it…
November 9th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Philip,
I used to have a link to a site, which I lost unfortunately, which displayed dynamic diagrams used in systems thinking to explore processes and the network of things all working together at the same time. You see them sometimes now, used by the physicists in climate change to try and present concepts to do with ‘run away’ change in the environment.
I was hinting at the ability to think in terms of dynamic processes in earlier posts here. I have read quite a good bit of Peter M. Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline. The ‘beer game’ chapter aught to be required reading for people interested in supply chain management.
I would spend a load of more time visiting Constantin Gurdgiev’s site if I was able to. His concepts are always worked out using visual aids to explain some of the concepts. Even I can understand the pictures, and that is saying something.
November 9th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Jay Forrester is the guy associated with system dynamics btw. There are a couple of his papers linked at the wikipedia page I remember.
November 9th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
actually, that was terrible maths.
It would be a line of carbon atoms 56.7 feet long…
November 9th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Here’s another brilliant display, this time of New York city, it’s a ‘macroscope’, it allows you to view the near and the far away in equal perspective. Very cool stuff.
http://kottkegae.appspot.com/images/uptown.jpg
and the designers: http://berglondon.com/projects/hat/
Now if we only had one of those for the Irish economy, we’d be sorted.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:09 pm
Was going to mention Edward Tufte’s books on the graphical display of information - still amazing especially considering they predate both the the internet and pc office suite software.
Examples of the excellent use of software to aid the visualisation of datasets can be found in these talks given by Hans Rosling on the http://www.ted.com web site.
http://tinyurl.com/99rnmm
http://tinyurl.com/aebbuw
November 10th, 2009 at 3:55 am
“powers of ten” - a 10 minute film, from the 1960’s, zooming out to the edge of the observable universe, then back, then zooming in to an atom.
mighty stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cmlhfdxuY
November 10th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Try Albert Bartlett: ‘Forgotten Fundamentals of the Energy Crisis’, Am. J. Phys. 46, (9), Sept. 1978, 876-888. Diagram, top-left, page 880!!!
B Peter
November 10th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
On the subject of diagrams, someone sent me this London underground system map history a while back. Interesting story behind it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcdARyIAZA4
November 14th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
On the subject of data and where it comes from, how it is put together etc, David Duffy wrote this piece of the business section of the Irish Independent newspaper on Thursday last which is very informative of the way in which Permanent TSB home price index is put together.
http://www.independent.ie/business/small-business/statistics-tell-some-home-truths-on-the-plunge-in-property-values-1940217.html
Ronan Lyon’s blog site might have a similar article describing the approach he uses with his Daft index, based on asking price, not strike price.