Maps Archive:
OECD Statistics Explorer and Some Other Cool Shit
In: Graphic Design (general) Graphic Tools Innovative Interactive Maps
2 Feb 2012This is an example of why you keep checking back on mediocre data visualization tools. The last time I looked at the OECD’s explorer, it was slow, kinda clunky, and not very innovative. This morning I took another look. Wow! It has interactive choropleth maps, motion scatter plots, profile plots, time graphs, and cool histogram tools – and all of them have excellent filters and fine tuning controls, can be viewed over time, are smoothly animated and you’re allowed to load your own data.
But wait! There’s more! MUCH more! It turns out the explorer is just one tool created by the Swedish National Center for Visual Analytics (NCVA), who have constructed a set of Geovisual Analytics Visualization (GAV) Flash tools, including what you need to create your own statistics explorer. The NCVA also has a spin-off company that sells a desktop version of the explorer, a Flow Map explorer that draws proportionate arrows on maps to track flows, and a multi-dimensional explorer (which I only played with a little – but is very very cool).
Check out the scatter tables in the MDIM as a way to select data in the other two panels:
I’m almost embarrassed I haven’t seen these before. On the other hand, I love that there is such innovation going on – all the time.
NOT a Global Warming Map?
26 Jan 2012The USDA has upgraded it’s plant hardiness map, which is based on average annual extreme temperatures. Horticulturists and gardeners use the maps as a gauge of what types of plants to grow. Some people think the new data indicates that temperatures are rising, and having visible effects on growing seasons and plant diversity. The USDA is (probably wisely) dodging the climate change aspects, pointing out that the methodologies used weren’t quite the same in the two versions. If you want to have fun, do a google news search for “plant hardiness” and see how different media coverage is of this (Chicago Sun Times, ThinkProgress, MSNBC).
The Washington Post used an interactive slider design on their map to let you flip between views of 1990 and 2012:
You can view static and interactive versions at the USDA site, as well as download the dataset.
Unfolding the Earth
25 Jan 2012An interesting algorithm based method of creating accurate globe projections. (via the Volume Project and NewScientist)
Mapping the earth is a classic problem. For thousands of years cartographers, mathematicians, and inventors have come up with methods to map the curved surface of the earth to a flat plane. The main problem is that you cannot do this perfectly, such that both the shape and size of the surface are depicted properly everywhere. This has intrigued me for a long time. Why not just take a map of a small part of the earth, which is almost perfect, glue neighboring maps to it, and repeat this until the whole earth is shown? Of course you get interrupts, but does this matter? What does such a map look like? To check this out, we developed myriahedral projections.
The Strait of Hormuz
In: Interactive Maps Politics
23 Jan 2012This FT map illustrates just how packed things are at the Persian Gulf’s bottleneck. The designers wisely chose to allow viewers to select which layers of information they wanted to see, and also provided useful related information as popups.
Here is the map with all layers turned on – which obviously would have been a disaster without the interactive filtering.
(note: some FT features require a subscription to view)
Where the Trees Are
18 Jan 2012A new high resolution (down to 30m) map of US forests created using a compilation of data from “space-based radar, satellite sensors, computer models, and a massive amount of ground-based data.” There’s also a detailed article about the project and the decisions that went into it. I guess I knew the midwest was sparse – but I didn’t think it was THAT sparse.
Ushahidi Visualization Platform
17 Jan 2012Ushahidi is a non-profit tech developer of free and open source software for collecting and real-time visualization crowd-sourced information. The project originated in a desire to map post-election violence in Kenya back in 2008 – but it has since expanded into a number of free toolsets that can be set up quickly during emergencies. To be honest, I haven’t dived too deep into this, but I wanted to post it in case others have a need.
What Percent Are You?
In: Culture Employment Interactive Maps Source: NYT US Economy
17 Jan 2012Enter your household income and see where you rank in 344 areas around the country:
There’s some interesting behind the scenes information on the news paper version here:
The World According to San Francisco
12 Jan 2012
Gold
12 Jan 2012
Press Freedom Map
9 Jan 2012I went to the Newseum this weekend (a great museum – recommend it to everyone) and saw the below wall sized map of freedom of the press. The online version of it isn’t much to look at, but the pop-up/drill down information for each country is very rich.
Online version (which was also available at the Museum at the kiosks you see above):
Indiemapper is Free
In: Graphic Tools Maps
5 Jan 2012Wow! The excellent online thematic map software Indiemapper is now free. Unfortunately, this decision appears to go hand in hand with one to reduce future development – which means we aren’t likely to see easy excel integration anytime soon (always a drawback in my mind). The features that are there, however, are beautifully integrated. The method for assigning classed and unclassed color ranges using an interactive histogram, for example, should be a model for other software; and the ease with which you can switch map projections is almost magical.
The Post is doing a great job visualizing the election so far, with a number of clear tools that they are keeping very up to date.
First up: Maps and interactive filtering of spending on ads, including videos of the ads themselves:
A Primary Tracker: mapping out candidate visits, “pre-game analysis”, results by county, and “post-game analysis” – for EACH state!
And a campaign finance explorer:
They also have something called the @MentionMachine that supposedly tracks candidates by twitter mentions and other media references that you can drill down through. Unfortunately, it isn’t working for me on either Firefox or IE.
The Cartography Nerds’ Map of the USA
3 Jan 2012David Imus created a new map of the United States by applying careful attention to details, design, and symbology. The figure below compares Imus’ version (on the right) to National Geographics (left). An article over at Slate highlights some of the design choices Imus made, as does a pamphlet from Imus’ website. Personally, I think it’s great that people are re-examining the “standard” way to map things, and love the way Imus squeezed in as much information as possible, without sacrificing clarity – on the other hand, it apparently took him two years and over 6,000 hours to complete. Yikes!
NASA iPad Visualization Explorer
27 Dec 2011Who has some of the coolest data around? NASA, of course. While you can dig around their numerous websites looking for gems, they have pulled together many of their best work into a free iPad App. The quality of the visualizations is incredible, and most of them are well annotated/narrated. They add 8-10 new visualizations each month.
Here are stills from some of the videos:
Wind currents:
Ocean currents:
Snow cover:
Carbon absorption:
Iraq and Afghanistan Casualties
In: Graphic Design (bad) Interactive Maps Politics Source: Washington Post Source: WSJ
19 Dec 2011There are a lot of these graphs out there. What I like about this presentation from the WSJ is that each dot in each bar can be clicked on for a short biography of the person who died – a nice combination of information and gravitas.
CNN’s tool maps out where they came from and where they died, and provides an area for others to leave memories for each fallen. While information rich, this one felt very sterile to me, and I couldn’t find anyone that had the “memories” section filled in.
The NYT’s went strangely artsy, with a digitized mosaic menu of the fallen’s faces:
The Washington Post’s Faces of the Fallen feature does a good job of presenting summary information, as well as photos of each soldier:
And the Huffington post comes up with the least interactive, self-identified as interactive (ALL CAPS IN THE TITLE!!!), series of charts I’ve even seen. Pretty sad.
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