Randy Krum's Blog, page 4

DataViz Books Read by Evelina Judeikyte

A map of dataviz books that designer Evelina Judeikyte read in 2022.

I get this question so often that in 2021 I created a visual map of the dataviz books on my shelves. If you’ve been following me for a while, you may remember the scatter plot below that sparked quite a lot of discussions on social media. As 2022 is coming to a close, I updated this map with the books I read in the past 12 months — you can recognize the new ones by the hatched pattern.

This is a fun visualization based on purely subjective data. It highlights some of the great DataViz books out there, and plots them into a scatterplot

My library has over 100 DataViz books, and I could see this design growing in future versions. A few things I think could improve the design:

Size the bubbles based on an additional data set like number of pages, price or Amazon ratings.

Move the axes to the center to create quadrants

Edit the title or add the year the books were published. There was some confusion online these were books published in 2022, instead of books she read in 2022

Add both a source link to her original post, and a copyright or Creative Commons statement. Infographic images often get shared without links to the original, so including the URL in the design helps readers find the original.

Hopefully she’ll read Cool Infographics in 2023!

Found on The Plot

Which States Get the Most Sleep?

Getting enough sleep is important to a person’s health. But how much control do you actually have in the matter? America Sleeping in 50 States infographic from Naplab shows that geographical location could play a big impact on how much sleep you get.

Have you ever wondered if the place you live could impact how much sleep you would get? Do sleepers in some states get more sleep than others? The answer is a resounding yes.

From east to west, there are clear patterns in how much sleep each state was getting and furthermore, how many sleepers in that state were hitting the targeted 7-hour benchmark.

The bar chart with the baseline of the right is a little disorienting. I would have kept the traditional baseline on the left and right flushed all of the state names to move them as close to the bars as possible.

After that, I would need a nap.

Read more at Naplab.com

Best and Worst States to Work in America

The Best and Worst States to Work in America infographic is the visualization of Oxfam America’s index. The index covers all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia; grading these states based on the state’s policies as of July 2021 for wages (40% of score), worker protections (35% of score), and rights to organize (25% of score). How does your state rank?

Wage Policies (40% of score)

Worker Protections (35% of score)

Rights to Organize (25% of score)

Workers in the US face dramatically different conditions based simply on where they live. Because the federal government has failed for decades to pass updates in labor laws, it has fallen to the states to determine wages, conditions, and rights.

The result is an ever-changing crazy patchwork of laws that have deepened inequality on geographic lines, and left millions of working families struggling to stay afloat.

As our economy inches toward recovery, it’s time to demand that the federal government step up and raise the bar for all workers in the US.

Thanks to Column Five for sharing this graphic!

How can AI help with data visualization?

This image was created with the assistance of DALL·E 2

How can AI help with data visualization? This is the question I’ve been asking myself for the last few months. Can data visualization designers benefit from these tools?

The image above was generated in DALL-E 2 with the phrase “A simple pie chart as an oil painting in bright colors.” So far, I think the only use in our field is for aesthetic purposes. There’s no good way to tie it into a database or spreadsheet of data. When I tried the phase “Create a data visualization of the world's population” it came up with these artistic ideas that aren’t tied to any real data. You can see even the text is “Greeked” and not real.

Create a data visualization of the world's population

I’ve been hearing about programmers using ChatGBT (a text-based AI) to help develop code. They may not use the code that the AI generates, but it has given them new ways to think about coding a solution to whatever problem they were working on.

When I entered the phrase “Explain the appropriate use of a pie chart” in the AI chat, it actually came up with a really good explanation:

“A pie chart is a circular statistical graphic, which is divided into slices to illustrate numerical proportion. In a pie chart, the arc length of each slice is proportional to the quantity it represents. Pie charts are good for displaying data for two or three categories.

Here are some guidelines for using pie charts effectively:

Use a pie chart when you want to show the proportions of a whole.

Use a pie chart when you want to compare the parts to the whole.

Use pie charts when you have only a few categories (2-5). If you have more than six categories, consider using a bar chart instead.

Make sure the categories are clearly labeled and easy to understand.

Use a title that clearly and accurately describes the data.

Use data labels to clearly label the percentage or value for each slice of the pie.

In summary, pie charts are best used for comparing parts of a whole and for displaying data for a small number of categories.”

So, back to my original question. How can AI help with data visualization?

I like the idea that programmers are using it as a brainstorming tool to help find new coding solutions. I think data visualization designers can use the different AI tools as a source of inspiration to create new ideas for visualizing data. The results may be artistic, but we can take those ideas back into our own visualization tools to create the actual charts/graphs/maps/diagrams.

One immediate use case would for accessibility. Text-to-image generator tools can be used to test the effectiveness of the ALT TEXT description of your visualizations. You can try DALL-E 2, Craiyon and Midjourney. See if the generated image is anywhere close to your original chart. If not, you probably need to write more descriptive text.

Of course, these tools will continue to get better, but I think we’re a long way off from AI understands how to design good data visualizations built on real data that clearly communicate an insight or message to an audience.

What are your thoughts? Have you experimented with any of these tools to help with your data visualization design process?

Leftover Turkey Flowchart

The 2022 Thanksgiving is behind us! If you are like most Americans, you ate turkey on the big day… And possibly for multiple days after the fact. Nathan Yau with FlowingData used a Sankey Diagram to explain the different ways that his leftover turkey has been consumed without having to eat the same exact meal each time.

I roasted a turkey for Thanksgiving. It tasted good. The problem is that there were not many people to eat it, and it was a big bird. But my mom taught me to never waste food. So, this is how the leftovers get used, without having to eat the same thing for a week.

Found on FlowingData

Literacy Scores by Country

Literacy Scores by Country is an interactive infographic showing Reading, Math, and Science scores from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Visit Flowing Data to interact with the graphic.

Among 15-year-old students, here’s how 77 countries compare in reading, math, and science. Higher scores are better.

These scores are from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). I kind of expected countries that excelled in one subject to be not as good in the other subject, but that wasn’t the case at all. If a country clusters around a certain score in reading, then they’re in the same range in the other subjects.

Note: B-S-J-Z stands for Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. PISA assessed different regions in China separately.

I love how this combines a Jitter Plot with a Parallel Coordinates Plot to create a new custom data visualization!

Found on: FlowingData

GISTEMP Climate Spiral

The GISTEMP Climate Spiral is an animated graphic created by NASA Visualization Studio showing the global surface temperature from the industrial revolution until today. TL;DR it’s getting hotter!

The visualization presents monthly global temperature anomalies between the years 1880-2021. These temperatures are based on the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4), an estimate of global surface temperature change. Anomalies are defined relative to a base period of 1951-1980. The data file used to create this visualization can be accessed here.

The Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) is a NASA laboratory managed by the Earth Sciences Division of the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The laboratory is affiliated with Columbia University’s Earth Institute and School of Engineering and Applied Science in New York.

The 'climate spiral' is a visualization designed by climate scientist Ed Hawkins from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading. Climate spiral visualizations have been widely distributed, a version was even part of the opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

Check out NASA Visualization Studio for the full video.

A Subway Map of Human Anatomy

A Subway Map of Human Anatomy infographic is a good example of bridging the gap between scientific information and a recognizable design. Johnathon Simmons M.D. uses a well-known visualization of the London Underground Subway system and uses that design style with the human body to explain the relationships between all of the systems within us. A Hires version is available on Visual Capitalist to view the intricate details.

We all have bodies, but how many of us truly know our way around them? Plenty of books explain in detail the functions of and relationships between each and every part of our anatomy, but few of them do it in a way the layman — and especially the layman not yet accustomed to the sight of human viscera laid bare — can readily grasp. We need a visualization of the human body, but what kind of visualization can best represent it with a maximum of clarity and a minimum of misleading distortion?

“Most people might imagine an intricate network of blood vessels or the complex neural circuits of the brain,” writes Visual Capitalist’s Iman Ghosh. “Or we might picture diagrams from the iconic medical textbook, Gray’s Anatomy.” But how about a visualization of the body in the style of a classic piece of information design we’ve all seen at least once, the London Underground map? “Created by Jonathan Simmonds M.D., a resident physician at Tufts Medical Center,” Ghosh writes, “it’s a simple yet beautifully intuitive demonstration of how efficiently our bodies work.”

Just as Harry Beck’s original 1933 London Underground map straightened out and color-coded each of the lines then in operation, Simmonds’ anatomical map traces thirteen different “lines” through the body, each of which represents a different system of the body: the nervous system in yellow, for example, the airway system in black, and the lymphatic system in green. “While dashed lines represent deeper structures, sections with ‘transfers’ show where different organ systems intersect,” Ghosh writes. If you’re wondering where to start, she adds, “there’s a helpful ‘You Are Here’ at the heart.”

Looks to be inspired by Sam Loman’s design, Underskin I posted in 2010.

Found on: Open Culture

Apple Launches Swift Charts

At the Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June 2022 Apple announced the release of Swift Charts, a programming framework for displaying charts in mobile applications using the Swift language. This framework is what Apple uses in their own apps like Health, Weather, Stocks and more.

This crosses two worlds for me, because there really is a User Experience Design component to chart design, and user experience designers are frequent attendees at my talk about data visualization.

Not a tool for the average data visualizer, this is specifically geared towards programmers building mobile apps. During WWDC they also released a handful of videos focused on Swift Charts and best practices for chart design in mobile apps. One of the videos features Nicholas Felton, a celebrity in the data visualization community, famous for his personal design of the Feltron Reports using his own quantified self data from 2005-2014. I see your printed copies of the Feltron Report on the desk in the video Nicholas! Very subtle!

I think this is the correct viewing order for the four videos:

Hello Swift Charts

Say hello to Swift Charts — a flexible framework that helps you create charts entirely in SwiftUI that look and feel right at home on all Apple platforms. Discover how you can use compositional syntax to make informative, delightful, and accessible charts with less code. We'll share the building blocks for making visualizations with Swift Charts, and explore how you can change your charts' design with a simple modifier. We'll also take you through the latest updates to Xcode Previews to help you chart a path toward an engaging experience.

Design an effective chart

Learn how to design focused, approachable, and accessible charts. We'll show you how to design great charts with clear marks, axes, descriptions, interaction, and color and help you create useful experiences for everyone.

Design app experiences with charts

Learn how you can enhance your app with charts to communicate data with more clarity and appeal. We'll show you when to use charts, how to use them and how they work together in a chart design system.

NOTE: Look for the Feltron Report copies on the desk next to Nicholas!

Swift Charts: Raise the bar

Dive deep into data visualizations: Learn how Swift Charts and SwiftUI can help your apps represent complex datasets through a wide variety of chart options. We'll show you how to plot different kinds of data and compose marks to create more elaborate charts. We'll also take you through Swift Charts' extensive chart customization API to help you match the style of your charts to your app.

Visualizing The Worlds’ Dependency on Russian Oil

It may not come as a surprise that Russia is one of the World’s top Oil and Natural Gas Producers. But who imports the most from them? Visualizing the World’s Dependency on Russian Oil and Natural Gas infographics from Information is Beautiful shows who the Russian war with Ukraine could be effecting.

Two good infographics that use a variety of data visualization styles. Treemaps, sankey diagrams, and bubble charts. I like how the sankey diagrams are directly connected to the Russia rectangle in the treemap.