Reynolds Week 2015Data VisualizationDianne M. FinchElon University@dmfinch

Reynolds Week 2015

@dmfinch Elon University Reynolds Visiting Professor

Today we hope to accomplish the following….

• Look at concepts briefly• Use Excel files to create visuals in Tableau Public• Clean files – or at least talk about it• Produce a tree chart, maps and bubbles• Add visuals to an HTML web page for viewing• IF TIME – we’ll look at Google API and JavaScript

What We’ll Cover Data and Encoding Overview Charts and Junk Charts Google Fusion – New Network Graph Tool

Map Geocommons – Lat/Long and Map

Custom Icons Google API – A timeline Google API – How to manipulate code without

knowing code. Other stuff if time!

Chart Junk

SABEW 2014

SABEW 2014

Data-ink Ratio More data – less ink! Save the ink for infographics and text –

add those to the same web page to help tell the story!

See: http://www.infovis-wiki.net/index.php/

Data-Ink_Ratio

It’s Ugly!But Get to Know it Before you viz it

Data – most essential component

You’ve downloaded a CSV or XLS or JSON.

Does your data reflect any trends? Any outliers?

Did you vet your data? Talk to the source? Check for errors?

Did you look for spelling issues (John Smith and Jon Smith)

Are there redundant rows? One header row?

Do you need more data to clarify your story?

What is the simplest and clearest chart you could use?

Try using a sketchpad to draw circles, lines, texture, legends.

is not Absolute, is variable, is uncertainneeds contextis often biased (politics and agendas)is often sampled (census)doesn’t tell a whole storyrequires skepticismis error-prone (humans enter it – and they are often bored and unfocused)

Data….

Data types

Nominal

Ordinal

Quantitative

So We Evaluate, filter, clean, question and attribute our data

SEE: Harvard Business Review

Data Cleaning with Excel – Lynda.com

Using absolute and relative cell references Entering data using AutoFill and other techniques

Restricting input using validation rules Sorting worksheet data Creating a custom sort order Filtering worksheet data Introducing Excel formulas and functions Adding a formula to a cell Introducing arithmetic operators Using absolute and relative cell references Joining text in cells with concatenation Summarizing data using an IF function Creating formulas to count cells Importing data from comma separated value (CSV) or text fil

es

Introducing PivotTable reports (all 10 items in this category)

Chart design last step – and there are many choices

Position along a common scale e.g. scatter plot

Position on identical but nonaligned scales e.g. multiple scatter plots

Length e.g. bar chart

Angle & Slope (tie) e.g. pie chart

Area e.g. bubbles

Volume, density, and color saturation (tie) e.g. heatmap

Color hue e.g. newsmap

A look at the good ones Arab Spring

Simple and Clear

Google Chart Gallery

NYT-Nursing Homes

Flu

Guns and Games

Other

SABEW 2014

SABEW 2014

SABEW 2014

See HTML template

Make a copy!

Google API

“Serving” Viz Via Web Pages

Not everything can be run from local computers

Hosted Sites

You will need a web server to place your pagesand images (png, svg, jpg, html)

Today we are using a “small orange” hosting site.

All web servers make files inside “public_html”available to everyone

Google API Programming: JavaScript

Copy/paste without programming

Tweak using intuitive options

Try this Latitude Longitude Tableau – take a peak Build layers on maps Add more custom icons

Geocommons Steps to produce “geocoded” CSV

Clean your data in Excel Save as a CSV Upload the file to Geocommons Choose to “geocode” - add latitude and

longitude Save your new CSV file (download from

Geocommons with new “geo” fields) Save your new KML file (it will open in

Google Earth)

Geocommons Maps Upload CSV to geocommons Choose to geocode Go through steps. Make sure you add the date on the screen that has

several questions. Save your newly uploaded file. Choose “Make a Map” As we saw in the session – the map shows up with your data. Click on the CSV filename on the right to open the “styling” section. Change the colors, shapes and tooltips. Try adding layers to the map by locating another CSV that you’ve

uploaded. Or – choose one that someone else uploaded, such as census data on income.

***Make sure that you are using data that is trustworthy and vetted when you use datasets found on Geocommons. You’ll need to look into it, do some spot checking, or contact the creator. There is a lot of census data available on Geocommons.