Pinboard (guardiantech)

Visualizing MBTA Data >> Github

guardiantech — 2014-06-12T13:15:52+00:00

Mike Barry and Brian Card:

Boston’s Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) operates the 4th busiest subway system in the U.S. after New York, Washington, and Chicago. If you live in or around the city you have probably ridden on it. The MBTA recently began publishing substantial amount of subway data through its public APIs. They provide the full schedule in General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) format which powers Google’s transit directions. They also publish realtime train locations for the Red, Orange, and Blue lines (but no Green or Silver line until 2015). The following visualizations use data captured from these feeds for the entire month of February, 2014. Also, working with the MBTA, we were able to acquire per-minute entry and exit counts at each station measured at the turnstiles used for payment. We attempt to present this information to help people in Boston better understand the trains, how people use the trains, and how the people and trains interact with each other.

Simply fantastic visualisation; set time aside to read and play with it. Bonus: you'll learn what a Marey diagram is, if you don't already know.

Clear off the table >> Darkhorse Analytics Blog

guardiantech — 2014-06-04T02:45:02+00:00

In the gif below we start with a table formatted similar to one of Excel’s many styling options which, much like the chart styles, do nothing to improve the table. Progressive deletions and some reorganization deliver a clearer and more compelling picture. As with charts, rather than dressing up our data we should be stripping it down.

Simple but effective way to make your data more presentable - and comprehensible.

Interactive News Graphics Collection >> Marike Rooze

guardiantech — 2013-10-15T05:54:10+00:00

Tons of interactive news graphics from The Guardian and New York Times. (The NYT has been pretty busy.) The home page is pretty entertaining too.

WTF Visualizations >> Tumblr

guardiantech — 2013-09-08T20:09:32+00:00

Tagline: "Visualizations that make no sense". Accurate.

Radiation Dosage Chart >> Information Is Beautiful

guardiantech — 2013-09-02T14:20:21+00:00

On this updated chart, Fukushima isn't looking like a great place for your next holiday. (Surprising comparison also found in chart: mammograms and Chernobyl. You'll have to look at it.)

World's biggest data breaches & hacks >> Information Is Beautiful

guardiantech — 2013-08-07T22:08:39+00:00

World's Biggest Data Breaches: Selected losses greater than 30,000 records

David McCandless, of "Information is Beautiful" fame, gets to work. Some of the biggest aren't what you'd expect.

Immersion: a people-centric view of your email life >> MIT

guardiantech — 2013-07-07T21:37:47+00:00

Once you log in, Immersion will use only the From, To, Cc and Timestamp fields of the emails in the account you are signing in with. It will not access the subject or the body content of any of your emails.
Upon logging out of Immersion, you will be presented with a choice to save or delete your data, which contains your compressed email metadata and user profile.

See your world the way the NSA sees it.

10 Years of Daring Fireball, visualised >> Distant Shape

guardiantech — 2012-08-14T12:30:36+00:00

Very neat visualisation showing how articles shifted from being predominantly about desktop topics to mobile topics.

Rickshaw: A JavaScript toolkit for creating interactive time series graphs

guardiantech — 2012-04-17T20:27:37+00:00

Description: Rickshaw is a JavaScript toolkit for creating interactive time series graphs. Looks nifty. Free, open source, MIT licence, developed at Shutterstock.com.

Bach's cello music rendered visually >> BAROQUE.ME

guardiantech — 2011-10-30T21:55:41+00:00

Remarkable HTML5/Javascript dynamic representation of Bach's cello suites. Beautiful.

Data Visualisation in Web Apps >> The Intercom Blog

guardiantech — 2011-10-20T14:32:47+00:00

Fantastic slide deck pointing out when and when not to use certain types of visualisation for data. (Also uses a slide embed system called speakerdeck.com which is rather cool.)

WikipediaVision (beta)

guardiantech — 2011-10-14T21:36:29+00:00

See people anonymously editing Wikipedia entries almost in real time. (Via @realouisewener who is.. the real Louise Wener).

Indices of Deprivation: Linked Data Prototype >> Open Data Blog

guardiantech — 2011-09-13T05:25:12+00:00

From the OpenViz blog: "Those of you with longer memories will recall my post back in May, promoting the then new triple store for DCLG’s Indices of Deprivation.
"I’d love to report that this has generated a flurry of new apps. I think I’m not alone when I say: we need some more real-world examples which show us the true power and potential of blending together different data sources….over the web…..using open standards."

Very impressive demonstration. The thought that occurs on seeing it is that indices don't tell you much about behaviour or other things; they don't provide any predictive power, and that's what's lacking.

Flickr and Twitter mapped together – See Something or Say Something? >> Flowing Data

guardiantech — 2011-07-12T21:17:57+00:00

"That's an artifact of population density and Flickr and Twitter users. What's more interesting though are the areas outside of the city dominated by blue and orange. For example, in the North America map above, the east is dominated by blue, whereas the west seems to be more orange.
"What compels people to tweet over taking a picture and vice versa? Or are we just seeing a Twitter scrape that happened in the early morning, before the west coast woke up?"

The Kill Math project >> worrydream

guardiantech — 2011-05-17T21:12:08+00:00

"When most people speak of Math, what they have in mind is more its mechanism than its essence. This "Math" consists of assigning meaning to a set of symbols, blindly shuffling around these symbols according to arcane rules, and then interpreting a meaning from the shuffled result. The process is not unlike casting lots.
"This mechanism of math evolved for a reason: it was the most efficient means of modeling quantitative systems given the constraints of pencil and paper. Unfortunately, most people are not comfortable with bundling up meaning into abstract symbols and making them dance. Thus, the power of math beyond arithmetic is generally reserved for a clergy of scientists and engineers (many of whom struggle with symbolic abstractions more than they'll actually admit).
"We are no longer constrained by pencil and paper. The symbolic shuffle should no longer be taken for granted as the fundamental mechanism for understanding quantity and change. Math needs a new interface."

Where did my tax dollars go? >> wheredidmytaxdollarsgo

guardiantech — 2011-04-18T20:42:54+00:00

Winner of a Google visualisation. We're next hoping for "where did my corporate tax payments go?"

Interactive WebGL Fractal Explorer >> Fractal Lab

guardiantech — 2011-04-13T08:24:46+00:00

"Fractal Lab is a WebGL based fractal explorer allowing you to explore 2D and 2D fractal. The fractals are rendered using the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) to enable real-time interactivity."