Aligned Left Blog » data

When Everyone is Free (to Meet)

Scott — Fri, 28 May 2010 19:19:38 +0000

When is Good is one of my all-time favorite web tools, making it super easy to find a good time to schedule a group meeting. They published a fascinating paper last year, sharing the most interesting findings from the aggregate data of user’s schedules, including:

Event invitations are most likely to be accepted for a Tuesday at 3pm.
…on average only three or four people out of ten will be available at any given time.

For more, download the full paper.

Search Suggestion Fun

Scott — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:50:22 +0000

Remember when AOL leaked 650,000 of its users’ search queries? For the first time, we got to see what real people search for on the web.

Now, thanks to Search Suggestion technology by Google, Yahoo, and others, you don’t have to wait for a corporate screw-up to expose search queries — you can do it yourself! Just type a few letters, and watch the most popular searches appear on top.

Questions & Answers

Scott — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:56:23 +0000

Questions & Answers is my latest project: an experiment in new, non-linear narrative forms, or what I’m calling data-as-narrative. But really it’s just a fun way to explore some of the crazy, interesting stuff people write online.

This is What Swine Flu Looks Like

Scott — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:11:28 +0000

I generated this image from the genetic code of a California case of H1N1 (posted today by the CDC). I fed the data into my color tools project, and assigned one color for each base found in DNA: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). The colors were chosen by searching ColourLovers for each of those base names and using the top result, i.e. the “best” colors for A, C, G, and T, according to ColourLovers.

Music from the Stock Market et al

Scott — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 18:38:49 +0000

I’ve been thinking about how best to auralize data. I realize that’s not a real word (yet), but consider auralization to be visualization’s auditory sibling. The music video by Johannes Kreidler above, while hokey, is both innovative and entertaining.

Chris Jordan Visualizes Social Statistics on a Large Scale

Scott — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:47:21 +0000

Add Chris Jordan to the list of people I want to meet.

Britain’s Telephone and Data Networks

Scott — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:11:46 +0000

Turning Data Into Stories

Scott — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:14:59 +0000

Lately, I’ve been thinking about data visualization as a narrative form. How can data be presented so that it truly tells a story in addition to revealing unseen information?

This student art project at Dartmouth College renders a polar bear on-screen. When electricity use in the dorm is high, the temperature rises, the ice melts, and the polar bear falls into the arctic waters. By unplugging, students can help the cuddly character “live” happily on the ice in a cool climate.

It’s a data visualization at its core, but by using a cute character—as opposed to a bar chart—the presentation triggers an emotional response and truly tells a story. Not only that, but the story is interactive, and the viewer/participant’s behavior determine the outcome.

Data Vis Interface Inspiration

Scott — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:15:20 +0000

From Michael Chang, the guy who brought true scalable type to Processing, comes a demo reel of data vis interaction inspiration. In my own work, I’ve focused on just “getting it to work” and display the data, but now I want to make sure the whole experience is as beautiful and fluid as in Chang’s work.

Real Time BART Arrivals Visualization

Scott — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 05:06:36 +0000

For my next project at Berkeley, I created a real time visualization of estimated train arrival times within the BART system. So next time you need to head over to the East Bay, just check the visualization and you can see how far away your train is from the station.

More detail on the project and process behind it are documented here. Thanks to BART for making their arrivals data available!

Launch project >