Beautiful Data


Book Description

In this insightful book, you'll learn from the best data practitioners in the field just how wide-ranging -- and beautiful -- working with data can be. Join 39 contributors as they explain how they developed simple and elegant solutions on projects ranging from the Mars lander to a Radiohead video. With Beautiful Data, you will: Explore the opportunities and challenges involved in working with the vast number of datasets made available by the Web Learn how to visualize trends in urban crime, using maps and data mashups Discover the challenges of designing a data processing system that works within the constraints of space travel Learn how crowdsourcing and transparency have combined to advance the state of drug research Understand how new data can automatically trigger alerts when it matches or overlaps pre-existing data Learn about the massive infrastructure required to create, capture, and process DNA data That's only small sample of what you'll find in Beautiful Data. For anyone who handles data, this is a truly fascinating book. Contributors include: Nathan Yau Jonathan Follett and Matt Holm J.M. Hughes Raghu Ramakrishnan, Brian Cooper, and Utkarsh Srivastava Jeff Hammerbacher Jason Dykes and Jo Wood Jeff Jonas and Lisa Sokol Jud Valeski Alon Halevy and Jayant Madhavan Aaron Koblin with Valdean Klump Michal Migurski Jeff Heer Coco Krumme Peter Norvig Matt Wood and Ben Blackburne Jean-Claude Bradley, Rajarshi Guha, Andrew Lang, Pierre Lindenbaum, Cameron Neylon, Antony Williams, and Egon Willighagen Lukas Biewald and Brendan O'Connor Hadley Wickham, Deborah Swayne, and David Poole Andrew Gelman, Jonathan P. Kastellec, and Yair Ghitza Toby Segaran




Data Sketches


Book Description

In Data Sketches, Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu document the deeply creative process behind 24 unique data visualization projects, and they combine this with powerful technical insights which reveal the mindset behind coding creatively. Exploring 12 different themes – from the Olympics to Presidents & Royals and from Movies to Myths & Legends – each pair of visualizations explores different technologies and forms, blurring the boundary between visualization as an exploratory tool and an artform in its own right. This beautiful book provides an intimate, behind-the-scenes account of all 24 projects and shares the authors’ personal notes and drafts every step of the way. The book features: Detailed information on data gathering, sketching, and coding data visualizations for the web, with screenshots of works-in-progress and reproductions from the authors’ notebooks Never-before-published technical write-ups, with beginner-friendly explanations of core data visualization concepts Practical lessons based on the data and design challenges overcome during each project Full-color pages, showcasing all 24 final data visualizations This book is perfect for anyone interested or working in data visualization and information design, and especially those who want to take their work to the next level and are inspired by unique and compelling data-driven storytelling.




Beautiful Data


Book Description

Beautiful Data is both a history of big data and interactivity, and a sophisticated meditation on ideas about vision and cognition in the second half of the twentieth century. Contending that our forms of attention, observation, and truth are contingent and contested, Orit Halpern historicizes the ways that we are trained, and train ourselves, to observe and analyze the world. Tracing the postwar impact of cybernetics and the communication sciences on the social and human sciences, design, arts, and urban planning, she finds a radical shift in attitudes toward recording and displaying information. These changed attitudes produced what she calls communicative objectivity: new forms of observation, rationality, and economy based on the management and analysis of data. Halpern complicates assumptions about the value of data and visualization, arguing that changes in how we manage and train perception, and define reason and intelligence, are also transformations in governmentality. She also challenges the paradoxical belief that we are experiencing a crisis of attention caused by digital media, a crisis that can be resolved only through intensified media consumption.




Dear Data


Book Description

Equal parts mail art, data visualization, and affectionate correspondence, Dear Data celebrates "the infinitesimal, incomplete, imperfect, yet exquisitely human details of life," in the words of Maria Popova (Brain Pickings), who introduces this charming and graphically powerful book. For one year, Giorgia Lupi, an Italian living in New York, and Stefanie Posavec, an American in London, mapped the particulars of their daily lives as a series of hand-drawn postcards they exchanged via mail weekly—small portraits as full of emotion as they are data, both mundane and magical. Dear Data reproduces in pinpoint detail the full year's set of cards, front and back, providing a remarkable portrait of two artists connected by their attention to the details of their lives—including complaints, distractions, phone addictions, physical contact, and desires. These details illuminate the lives of two remarkable young women and also inspire us to map our own lives, including specific suggestions on what data to draw and how. A captivating and unique book for designers, artists, correspondents, friends, and lovers everywhere.




Knowledge is Beautiful


Book Description

A fascinating and thoroughly modern glimpse of world knowledge. It offers a deeper, more ranging look at the world and its history, and an entirely democratic, global look at key issues bedded into the foundations of world knowledge - from questions and facts on history and politics to science, literature and more.




Information is Beautiful


Book Description

Miscellaneous facts and ideas are interconnected and represented in a visual format, a "visual miscellaneum," which represents "a series of experiments in making information approachable and beautiful" -- from p.007







Beautiful Data


Book Description

Beautiful Data is both a history of big data and interactivity, and a sophisticated meditation on ideas about vision and cognition in the second half of the twentieth century. Contending that our forms of attention, observation, and truth are contingent and contested, Orit Halpern historicizes the ways that we are trained, and train ourselves, to observe and analyze the world. Tracing the postwar impact of cybernetics and the communication sciences on the social and human sciences, design, arts, and urban planning, she finds a radical shift in attitudes toward recording and displaying information. These changed attitudes produced what she calls communicative objectivity: new forms of observation, rationality, and economy based on the management and analysis of data. Halpern complicates assumptions about the value of data and visualization, arguing that changes in how we manage and train perception, and define reason and intelligence, are also transformations in governmentality. She also challenges the paradoxical belief that we are experiencing a crisis of attention caused by digital media, a crisis that can be resolved only through intensified media consumption.




Data Visualization in Society


Book Description

Today we are witnessing an increased use of data visualization in society. Across domains such as work, education and the news, various forms of graphs, charts and maps are used to explain, convince and tell stories. In an era in which more and more data are produced and circulated digitally, and digital tools make visualization production increasingly accessible, it is important to study the conditions under which such visual texts are generated, disseminated and thought to be of societal benefit. This book is a contribution to the multi-disciplined and multi-faceted conversation concerning the forms, uses and roles of data visualization in society. Do data visualizations do 'good' or 'bad'? Do they promote understanding and engagement, or do they do ideological work, privileging certain views of the world over others? The contributions in the book engage with these core questions from a range of disciplinary perspectives.




Beautiful Visualization


Book Description

Visualization is the graphic presentation of data -- portrayals meant to reveal complex information at a glance. Think of the familiar map of the New York City subway system, or a diagram of the human brain. Successful visualizations are beautiful not only for their aesthetic design, but also for elegant layers of detail that efficiently generate insight and new understanding. This book examines the methods of two dozen visualization experts who approach their projects from a variety of perspectives -- as artists, designers, commentators, scientists, analysts, statisticians, and more. Together they demonstrate how visualization can help us make sense of the world. Explore the importance of storytelling with a simple visualization exercise Learn how color conveys information that our brains recognize before we're fully aware of it Discover how the books we buy and the people we associate with reveal clues to our deeper selves Recognize a method to the madness of air travel with a visualization of civilian air traffic Find out how researchers investigate unknown phenomena, from initial sketches to published papers Contributors include: Nick Bilton,Michael E. Driscoll,Jonathan Feinberg,Danyel Fisher,Jessica Hagy,Gregor Hochmuth,Todd Holloway,Noah Iliinsky,Eddie Jabbour,Valdean Klump,Aaron Koblin,Robert Kosara,Valdis Krebs,JoAnn Kuchera-Morin et al.,Andrew Odewahn,Adam Perer,Anders Persson,Maximilian Schich,Matthias Shapiro,Julie Steele,Moritz Stefaner,Jer Thorp,Fernanda Viegas,Martin Wattenberg,and Michael Young.