5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year

December 23, 2008 7:21 AM

5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year from FlowingData. Perhaps related, a new advertisement for MINI that uses augmented reality (AR).
posted by stbalbach (9 comments total)

That MINI ad is a great idea. There was a good link a while ago that showed how anyone could print out "qrcodes" (like a 2D barcode) and do their own AR. I can't find it now, though all those terms have plenty of google hits.

Still, it's ultimately disappointing to me since I am still left staring at an image on a computer screen. You can turn the sheet to turn the model, but that's basically just a new input device. VR goggles would make it more interesting. And force feedback. Also a holodeck and a pony.
posted by DU at 7:42 AM on December 23, 2008

My favorite data visualization tool: language.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:05 AM on December 23, 2008

My favorite data visualization tool: language.

That works fine until you have hundreds of megs of data. At some point decorating the field of a football stadium with sheets of paper becomes tedious.

If I take the dot product of the 50 yard line and the 20 yard line and multiply that by the 15 yard line...
posted by ryoshu at 8:52 AM on December 23, 2008

I don't really get some of these as data visualization. The I Want You one doesn't really tell me anything about the underlying data; it's art with data as a seed. Similarly the temporal dimension of the Great Brittan one isn't very useful. On the telecom display I have to guess that I'm just seeing population density. Streamgraphs are neat, but also hard to read. You have to draw vertical lines to see how each movie is doing at a given time, but your mind wants to draw lines perpendicular to the surface/flow. That the shape constantly changes makes the area and height hard to see.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 9:13 AM on December 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

That MINI ad is pretty silly, really. I mean what's the point of adding the complexity of the magazine ad and webcam, then making the user sit there and wave the ad around in front of the cam while watching the screen, when you could have very simply just done a website with a rotatable 3D image and been done with it? And probably have it work cross-platform, to boot. I don't see the "interactivity" as much of a win save for a fleeting "isn't that clever?" moment...quickly followed by a "I kinda feel like a dork waving this magazine around like this" moment.
posted by Thorzdad at 9:50 AM on December 23, 2008

My thoughts exactly, Thorzdad.
The Obama-Clinton Divide is interesting because of the data, not the visualization.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 9:58 AM on December 23, 2008

That MINI ad is pretty silly, really. I mean what's the point...

I think the point is that we're here talking about it.
posted by Who_Am_I at 10:13 AM on December 23, 2008

(See also 7 Beautiful Data Visualizations from Mashable. Some of the same stuff.)

Maybe not data visualization, but climate modeling, I love this from Geneva based New Economic Orientation for the 21st Century (NOE21)
posted by marvin at 10:14 AM on December 23, 2008

Augmented reality is a just gimmick for selling cars.
posted by stbalbach at 10:32 AM on December 23, 2008