Comments on: The Visual Display of Data

By: Brian O' Hanlon

Brian O' Hanlon — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:51:51 +0000

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.

By: Brian O' Hanlon

Brian O' Hanlon — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:15:31 +0000

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

By: B P Woods

B P Woods — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:43:54 +0000

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

By: john_m

john_m — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:55:56 +0000

“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

By: mickcrawford

mickcrawford — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:09:43 +0000

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

By: Stephen Kinsella

Stephen Kinsella — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:05:09 +0000

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.

By: LorcanRK

LorcanRK — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:03:28 +0000

actually, that was terrible maths.

It would be a line of carbon atoms 56.7 feet long…

By: Brian O' Hanlon

Brian O' Hanlon — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:59:14 +0000

Jay Forrester is the guy associated with system dynamics btw. There are a couple of his papers linked at the wikipedia page I remember.

By: Brian O' Hanlon

Brian O' Hanlon — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:57:50 +0000

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.

By: Brian Lucey

Brian Lucey — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:53:26 +0000

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…