Data

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Technology Review: Putting the Web in a Spreadsheet. Vast quantities of data are freely available on the Web, and it can be a potential treasure trove for many businesses–providing they can figure out how to use it effectively. A company can, for example, comb through data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and court records prior to acquiring another company to see if any of its intellectual property is tied up in legal action.

In practice, however, going through so much information takes time and effort to orchestrate. IBM hopes that a new tool, called BigSheets, will help users analyze Web data more easily. The company has developed a test version of the software for the British Library. “The ability of any user to do their own types of interesting analytics is coming of age,” says Rod Smith, vice president of emerging Internet technologies for IBM. BigSheets is built on top of another piece of software called Hadoop. BigSheets uses Hadoop to crawl through Web pages, parsing them to extract key terms and other useful data. Swivel | See, understand, and share numbers. Many Eyes.

Tim Berners-Lee: The year open data went worldwide. Snake Oil? The scientific evidence for health supplements. See the data: bit.ly/snakeoilsupps. See the static versionSee the old flash version Check the evidence for so-called Superfoods visualized. Note: You might see multiple bubbles for certain supplements. These is because some supps affect a range of conditions, but the evidence quality varies from condition to condition.

For example, there’s strong evidence that garlic can lower blood pressure. But studies on whether it can prevent colds have produced inconclusive results. In these cases, we give a supp another bubble. This visualisation generates itself from this Google Doc. As ever, we welcome your thoughts, crits, comments, corrections, compliments, tweaks, new evidence, missing supps, and general feedback. » Purchase: Amazon US or Barnes & Noble | UK or Waterstones » Download: Apple iBook | Kindle (UK & US) » See inside For more graphics, visualisations and data-journalism: Google Fusion Tables Tour. 11 Ways to Visualize Changes Over Time – A Guide | FlowingData. Deal with data? No doubt you've come across the time-based variety.

The visualization you use to explore and display that data changes depending on what you're after and data types. Maybe you're looking for increases and decreases, or maybe seasonal patterns. This is a guide to help you figure out what type of visualization to use to see that stuff. Let's start with the basics: the line graph. An example: Comparing Roger Clemens to Hall of Fame Pitchers Scatterplots work well if you have a lot of data points.

An example: Oxygen Concentration Over Time Bar charts work best for time series when you're dealing with distinct points in time (as opposed to more continuous data). An example: Whoâ€™s Going to Win Nathanâ€™s Hot Dog Eating Contest? Use this the same way you would a bar chart when you have multiple categories (hence the stacking). An example: Bad Housing Loans in Forclosure The stacked area is the stacked bar's more versatile sibling. An example: Past 25 Years of Consumer Spending. 9 Ways to Visualize Proportions – A Guide | FlowingData. With all the visualization options out there, it can be hard to figure out what graph or chart suits your data best. This is a guide to make your decision easier for one particular type of data: proportions. Maybe you want to show poll results or the types of crime over time, or maybe you're interested in a single percentage.

Here's how you can show it. We all know about the pie chart. The circle represents the whole, and the size of wedge represents a percentage of that whole. Together, those represented values, add up to 100 percent. Use this only if you're comparing a few values (like three or less) or if you're like me, use it for a ton of categories to annoy the BI people every now and then. See the pie in action: What Do You Use to Analyze and/or Visualize Data? Oh yes, it's pie's lesser-used cousin, the donut. See the donut in action: What Britain Has Eaten the Past Three Decades Use the stacked area chart if you want to show changes over time for several variables. Microsoft Pivot: Interact With Massive Amounts of Data | FlowingData. What if you could see all the individual bits of information scattered across the Web in one view and then interact with it in a meaningful way?

This is what Microsoft Live Labs' new Pivot experiment tries to do. Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web. The goal is to let users make connections between pages, data points, photos, etc that go beyond links, with what the developers call collections. The below video is a demonstration and explanation: Pivot's ability to display lots of thumbnails and then reorganize and zoom in on them is the tool's foundation. Jeffrey Heer et. al. wrote a paper on these transitions a while back. All in all, it's an interesting concept, and it will be fun to see where the Live Labs team takes the project. [Thanks, Jeff] Information goes out to play.

Serious information used to be relayed in words, graphs and charts - pictures were just pretty window dressing. That's all changing, says David McCandless. E-mails. News. Facebook. Wikipedia. Do you ever feel there's just too much information? Do you struggle to keep up with important issues, subject and ideas? In this age of information overload, a new solution is emerging that could help us cope with the oceans of data surrounding and swamping us. The approach is simple: apply the rules of visual design to information - make information into images, rather than text. So, instead of listing the mind-boggling billions spent by governments, show them graphically - like The Billion Dollar O Gram image at the top of the page. The image arose out of a frustration with the reporting of billion dollar amounts in the media. Or, in another example, instead of explaining the connection between say, mercury and the influenza jab, depict it visually.

SOURCE: David McCandless I love information. Why Americans are fat. Education Database Online Why Americans Are Fat Embed the image below on your site <a href=" src=" alt="Why America is Fat" width="1050" height="2350" border="0" /></a><br />Created by <a href=" Education</a> Created by Online Education & Online Colleges If you take a look around, or even look into the mirror, it is likely that you know America has a weight problem. Why is that? You have probably seen on the back of packages of food the text “based on a 2000 calorie diet”. People that exercise often burn more calories. This imposes many costs to society.