Coolest data representation I have seen in a while

I have so many things I'd like to blog about - Toby, skating (Adult Nationals, and Dance tests - I have passed the Rocker Foxtrot and the Tango so am moving on from Silver dances to Pre-Golds - wheee!), plus lots more - but have to post a quickie data thing for now.

This is the coolest data representation I have seen in a while.  I happened upon it here - Flowing Data, a new blog on my blogroll.  It's a New York Times graphic, where rather than using a traditional pie chart to break up and portray how folks spend their budget, they have divided the pie into sections, and then each section also has chunks corresponding to areas of spending - with amounts in that chunk and the increase/decrease from last year.  The chunks are color coded by side of the change in prices - so it looks more like a stained glass window.  It's also interactive - you can click on individual areas.

While my job as an Institutional Researcher does not involve a lot of visual representation stuff, I think it's hugely important.  Edward Tufte's work is phenomenal - I inflict one of his essays (on the use and mis-use of Powerpoint) on my Research students.  Lately, I have been following Freebase - which is a cool attempt that sort of combines my interest in mind-mapping (an example is here) to organize stuff and the vast amount of data available on the interweb.  Sort of.  If you really think about it.  Which is what I have been doing.

At some point, I know I'll have the headspace and time to blog more - bear with me while it's a bit hit or miss please :)  I am knitting - there's an FO on the horizon - so there's that at least!

Comments

[Teej]

How cool! Thank you for sharing both the graphic and the link to the Flowing Data blog.

See you in Seattle?