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The utilitarian function of images: railroads, anatomy, and drosophila
When do images have a purely utilitarian function? Reading through Edward Tufte’s Envisioning Information (an incredible book that I recommend to virtually every social scientist, available on...
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visualizing corruption
I have been arguing that good data visualization fosters interdisciplinary cooperation, adds to the general understanding of academic topics, and serves to reveal otherwise opaque organizational...
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The brain as a pattern recognition machine
I came across a group of researchers doing precisely the kind of work that I have been advocating for on this blog. This is really exciting stuff that I am still working through, but I wanted to share...
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Visualizing predictive crime maps
Crime mapping has been a tool employed by police for more than a century, but only recently has the data collection been organized and consistent enough to accurately aggregate spatial crime...
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Public Debt and GDP
Which countries have the greatest public debts relative to the size of their economies? The IMF has a great data mapping tool, which includes the ability to look at historical data and play back...
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W.E.B. Du Bois, radical visualization, and the transformative power of...
First of all, I apologize for my brief absence. I was at Morehouse College presenting a paper (that doesn’t really have anything to do with my blog). While I was at the airport waiting for my late...
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AAAS Visualization Challenge
Data visualization isn’t limited to the social sciences. As a case in point, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (which publishes the journal Science) recently held a competition...
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Visualizing a Public Good
Have you ever been waiting for a bus for half an hour, only for two half-filled buses of the same route to roll up to your stop? Known as bus bunching, this can be an incredibly annoying experience,...
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Strangers in Paris: census maps, layering, and data compression
I have been working on a blog series on census data visualizations for another site (which will be reproduced here when it’s all up). First of all, I am using that as an excuse to justify how little I...
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Data visualization and educational efficiency
Can data visualization be used in the classroom? I recently stumbled on some research suggesting that presenting information visually may have significant benefits over text-based materials. The BBC...
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