Data visualization is an intersection of statistics and art - one to
be correct, the other to make sense and engage our attention. Excel
and other spreadsheet programs do well at the "typical" visualizations
- pie charts, lines, bars and whatnot. Where they fail miserably is
trying to show "Vietnam today is similar to the US of 1970 based on
mortality rate and GDP". This is the sort of stuff gapminder excels
at. It makes effective use of availabie dimensions - x, y, size,
color, animation for time. One thing I would be interested in looking
at is using OpenGl or something of the sort to add the z axis and
allow the user to freely rotate and explore and even 'fly over' the
data. A good talk, albeit somewhat long.
No comments:
Post a Comment