1. Charts and graphs and diagrams are not just for boring old worklife. Check out this series of valentines day inspired charts: Why you should continue to date me; a series of charts and graphs. by Joel A. Friesen.
    I personally think that if that doesn't convince you of the power of love and the power of the clear presentation of information, nothing will. However if you're still not in a valentines day mood, see how love conquers hate at google trends.

    Thanks to information aesthetics for those links.

    What did I do for valentines day? I wish I'd thought of charts and diagrams! Instead I went for a mosaic. Happy valentines day!

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  2. I had occasion to build some bubble charts the other day, which made me realise what an under-used resource they are. I almost never see them used! So here's a post to show how useful they can be. Here is just one use, of course.

    The data I had was seven 'models' that were built across two states. A model in this context referring to a score given to every person in a given state signifying a property of that person: their likelihood to vote, their likelihood to support a given candidate or their likelihood to support a particular issue. One state had three such models, and another state had four. I wanted to prepare a PowerPoint slide comparing these models. In particular I wanted to compare the distribution of scores across the population. Enough words. Here's the traditional way that this data might have been displayed:


    I made this as clear as I could in this format. No axes, clear labels, colour differentiation between states. But still its hard to compare, and there is a LOT of clutter required. Here is the same data presented with bubble charts:

    Now you'll see that its perfectly possible to compare across states, and across models. Some are 'lumpy', some are smooth. Some reach right to the low scores and others are concentrated in the centre.

    A quick post. But I hope an interesting one. Next time you have a problem like this, consider a bubble or two :)
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  3. I have been looking at Internet usage by country and in the spirit of sharing, here is what I found. Based on number of Internet users in 2005 (the last year of 'actual' in the data that I had), East Asia and Europe are the biggest two regions, while the US is the biggest single country.

    This treemap lets you explore the data yourself, and answer your own questions about it. I do like this kind of data visualization tool. Do let me know in the comments if you know of other similar tools.



    Here is a world map that Many Eyes lets you produce. I find this particularly helpful in flipping from 2001 to 2005 and to 2008 and watching the changing patterns. It really gives you a feel for the data in a way that a PowerPoint chart or a table of data doesn't.



    And here are a couple of PowerPoint slides that present it in a more traditional (and less interactive) way. This shows that although the US is the biggest Internet user right now, its growth is slowing to a forecast 3% per annum while China is speeding ahead with a forecast growth rate of 23% per annum (albeit having slowed from its 40% per annum growth between 2000 and 2005). India and Japan are already third and fourth, and forecast to stay there through to 2008, although India is forecast to grow very significantly as you might imagine (Japan is not).

    The same data presented at a regional level highlights that North America is only the third biggest Internet user in the world, behind East Asia and Europe (but the economy and the common language clearly makes it a priority for commercial activity). Its interesting to see that South / South East Asia is forecast to continue its strong growth and motor in to a very significant position ahead of Europe by 2008.

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