d3.js. Manipulating data like a boss with d3. Authoring Data-Driven Documents. Over the last few months I’ve been learning D3 (Data-Driven Documents), which is a really powerful data visualization library built for javascript. The InfoVis paper gets to the gritty details of how it supports data transformations, immediate evaluation of attributes, and a native SVG representation. These features can be more or less helpful depending on what kind of visualization you’re working on. For instance, transformations don’t really matter if you’re just building static graphs. But being able to inspect the SVG representation of your visualization (and edit it in the console) is really quite helpful and powerful. But for all the power that D3 affords, is programming really how we should be (want to be?)
Here’s something that I recently made with D3. Now, of course, the exploratory data analysis, storyboarding, and research needed to tell this story were time-consuming. But, really, where’s the flash-like authoring tool of data visualization? D3 and the Power of Projections : MapBrief™ "Web Mercator? " If your loxodromes aren't straight, keep my name out of your mouth. So what mapping industry titan would rise up and liberate us from the tyranny of web mercator in the browser?
A guy in California who works for the…The New York Times? D3.js: Data Driven Documents D3 is a javascript library that not only does choropleths, proportional symbols, etc. in the browser (no IE 6-8; we can’t wait up forever), but a stunning array of other types of visualizations. Which is essential because even we mappers realize that sometimes the best map isn’t a map. A Swiss-army knife of data-display possibility to complement our everyday cudgeling of points, lines, and polygons.
May I Interest You In Some Peirce Quincuncial? BREAKING: Projections are back in the browser. And how! Or heck, just go all in on a spheroid, and spin it, inside your browser. Cro$$over Skill$ Small Steps, Incremental Absorption But that $15K isn’t free money. The Tyndale Revolution in Online Mapping —Brian Timoney. 2011-D3 InfoVis.pdf.