Beautiful Visualization

Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts

Larger Cover

Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts

By Julie Steele, Noah Iliinsky

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Released: April 2010

Pages: 416

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.

Chapter 1 On Beauty
1. What Is Beauty?
2. Learning from the Classics
3. How Do We Achieve Beauty?
4. Putting It Into Practice
5. Conclusion
Chapter 2 Once Upon a Stacked Time Series
1. Question + Visual Data + Context = Story
2. Steps for Creating an Effective Visualization
3. Hands-on Visualization Creation
4. Conclusion
Chapter 3 Wordle
1. Wordle's Origins
2. How Wordle Works
3. Is Wordle Good Information Visualization?
4. How Wordle Is Actually Used
5. Conclusion
6. Acknowledgments
7. References
Chapter 4 Color: The Cinderella of Data Visualization
1. Why Use Color in Data Graphics?
2. Luminosity As a Means of Recovering Local Density
3. Looking Forward: What About Animation?
4. Methods
5. Conclusion
6. References and Further Reading
Chapter 5 Mapping Information: Redesigning the New York City Subway Map
1. The Need for a Better Tool
2. London Calling
3. New York Blues
4. Better Tools Allow for Better Tools
5. Size Is Only One Factor
6. Looking Back to Look Forward
7. New York's Unique Complexity
8. Geography Is About Relationships
9. Sweat the Small Stuff
10. Conclusion
Chapter 6 Flight Patterns: A Deep Dive
1. Techniques and Data
2. Color
3. Motion
4. Anomalies and Errors
5. Conclusion
6. Acknowledgments
Chapter 7 Your Choices Reveal Who You Are: Mining and Visualizing Social Patterns
1. Early Social Graphs
2. Social Graphs of Amazon Book Purchasing Data
3. Conclusion
4. References
Chapter 8 Visualizing the U.S. Senate Social Graph (1991–2009)
1. Building the Visualization
2. The Story That Emerged
3. What Makes It Beautiful?
4. And What Makes It Ugly?
5. Conclusion
6. References
Chapter 9 The Big Picture: Search and Discovery
1. The Visualization Technique
2. YELLOWPAGES.COM
3. The Netflix Prize
4. Creating Your Own
5. Conclusion
6. References
Chapter 10 Finding Beautiful Insights in the Chaos of Social Network Visualizations
1. Visualizing Social Networks
2. Who Wants to Visualize Social Networks?
3. The Design of SocialAction
4. Case Studies: From Chaos to Beauty
5. References
Chapter 11 Beautiful History: Visualizing Wikipedia
1. Depicting Group Editing
2. History Flow in Action
3. Chromogram: Visualizing One Person at a Time
4. Conclusion
Chapter 12 Turning a Table into a Tree: Growing Parallel Sets into a Purposeful Project
1. Categorical Data
2. Parallel Sets
3. Visual Redesign
4. A New Data Model
5. The Database Model
6. Growing the Tree
7. Parallel Sets in the Real World
8. Conclusion
9. References
Chapter 13 The Design of "X by Y"
1. Briefing and Conceptual Directions
2. Understanding the Data Situation
3. Exploring the Data
4. First Visual Drafts
5. The Final Product
6. Conclusion
7. Acknowledgments
8. References
Chapter 14 Revealing Matrices
1. The More, the Better?
2. Databases As Networks
3. Data Model Definition Plus Emergence
4. Network Dimensionality
5. The Matrix Macroscope
6. Reducing for Complexity
7. Further Matrix Operations
8. The Refined Matrix
9. Scaling Up
10. Further Applications
11. Conclusion
12. Acknowledgments
13. References
Chapter 15 This Was 1994: Data Exploration with the NYTimes Article Search API
1. Getting Data: The Article Search API
2. Managing Data: Using Processing
3. Three Easy Steps
4. Faceted Searching
5. Making Connections
6. Conclusion
Chapter 16 A Day in the Life of the New York Times
1. Collecting Some Data
2. Let's Clean 'Em First
3. Python, Map/Reduce, and Hadoop
4. The First Pass at the Visualization
5. Scene 1, Take 1
6. Scene 1, Take 2
7. The Second Pass at the Visualization
8. Visual Scale and Other Visualization Optimizations
9. Getting the Time Lapse Working
10. So, What Do We Do with This Thing?
11. Conclusion
12. Acknowledgments
Chapter 17 Immersed in Unfolding Complex Systems
1. Our Multimodal Arena
2. Our Roadmap to Creative Thinking
3. Project Discussion
4. Conclusion
5. References
Chapter 18 Postmortem Visualization: The Real Gold Standard
1. Background
2. Impact on Forensic Work
3. The Virtual Autopsy Procedure
4. The Future for Virtual Autopsies
5. Conclusion
6. References and Suggested Reading
Chapter 19 Animation for Visualization: Opportunities and Drawbacks
1. Principles of Animation
2. Animation in Scientific Visualization
3. Learning from Cartooning
4. Presentation Is Not Exploration
5. Types of Animation
6. Staging Animations with DynaVis
7. Principles of Animation
8. Conclusion: Animate or Not?
9. Further Reading
10. Acknowledgments
11. References
Chapter 20 Visualization: Indexed.
1. Visualization: It's an Elephant.
2. Visualization: It's Art.
3. Visualization: It's Business.
4. Visualization: It's Timeless.
5. Visualization: It's Right Now.
6. Visualization: It's Coded.
7. Visualization: It's Clear.
8. Visualization: It's Learnable.
9. Visualization: It's a Buzzword.
10. Visualization: It's an Opportunity.

Appendix Contributors
Appendix Colophon

Title:

Beautiful Visualization

By:

Julie Steele, Noah Iliinsky

Publisher:

O'Reilly Media

Formats:

Print
Ebook
Safari Books Online

Print:

June 2010

Ebook:

April 2010

Pages:

416

Print ISBN:

978-1-4493-7986-5

| ISBN 10:

1-4493-7986-9

Ebook ISBN:

978-1-4493-7987-2

| ISBN 10:

1-4493-7987-7

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Customer Reviews

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O'Reilly Media Beautiful Visualization

3.3

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Displaying reviews 1-3

12/2/2010

(5 of 5 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Beautiful Case Studies

By Joe

from Michigan

About Me Designer, Developer, Educator, Maker

Pros

Accurate
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written

Cons

Not comprehensive enough

Best Uses

Expert
Intermediate

Comments about O'Reilly Media Beautiful Visualization:

Consisting of a wide variety visualization examples, edited together to give a consisent impression of helpful methodology in turning data into pictures. This is a good theoretical book, filled with hands on examples, and concrete aspects of what data visualization ends up looking like in the field.

8/26/2010

(7 of 10 customers found this review helpful)

4.0

Code samples

By Chris

from Cambridge, MA

About Me Designer, Developer

Pros

Accurate
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written

Cons

Best Uses

Intermediate

Comments about O'Reilly Media Beautiful Visualization:

It's great book, but where are the code samples?

8/11/2010

(17 of 24 customers found this review helpful)

2.0

Low quality PDF E-book graphics

By Ebook Guy

from Portland, OR

Comments about O'Reilly Media Beautiful Visualization:

I just purchased this as a PDF after receiving a promotional email. I've thumbed through the printed book in the bookstore, and I remember it as a fairly slick-looking volume. I was disappointed to open the PDF and find it rendered with mostly low-quality graphical figures... many so grainy they aren't even legible. I expected more from a book about visualization. Bandwidth and disc space are cheap[...]

Displaying reviews 1-3

Save a Tree - Go Digital what is this?

Ebook: $47.99

Formats: APK, DAISY, ePub, Mobi, PDF

Print & Ebook: $65.99

Print: $59.99

Safari Books Online - Read now >

Chapter 1 On Beauty

What Is Beauty?

Learning from the Classics

How Do We Achieve Beauty?

Putting It Into Practice

Conclusion

Chapter 2 Once Upon a Stacked Time Series

Question + Visual Data + Context = Story

Steps for Creating an Effective Visualization

Hands-on Visualization Creation

Conclusion

Chapter 3 Wordle

Wordle's Origins

How Wordle Works

Is Wordle Good Information Visualization?

How Wordle Is Actually Used

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

Chapter 4 Color: The Cinderella of Data Visualization

Why Use Color in Data Graphics?

Luminosity As a Means of Recovering Local Density

Looking Forward: What About Animation?

Methods

Conclusion

References and Further Reading

Chapter 5 Mapping Information: Redesigning the New York City Subway Map

The Need for a Better Tool

London Calling

New York Blues

Better Tools Allow for Better Tools

Size Is Only One Factor

Looking Back to Look Forward

New York's Unique Complexity

Geography Is About Relationships

Sweat the Small Stuff

Conclusion

Chapter 6 Flight Patterns: A Deep Dive

Techniques and Data

Color

Motion

Anomalies and Errors

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Chapter 7 Your Choices Reveal Who You Are: Mining and Visualizing Social Patterns

Early Social Graphs

Social Graphs of Amazon Book Purchasing Data

Conclusion

References

Chapter 8 Visualizing the U.S. Senate Social Graph (1991–2009)

Building the Visualization

The Story That Emerged

What Makes It Beautiful?

And What Makes It Ugly?

Conclusion

References

Chapter 9 The Big Picture: Search and Discovery

The Visualization Technique

YELLOWPAGES.COM

The Netflix Prize

Creating Your Own

Conclusion

References

Chapter 10 Finding Beautiful Insights in the Chaos of Social Network Visualizations

Visualizing Social Networks

Who Wants to Visualize Social Networks?

The Design of SocialAction

Case Studies: From Chaos to Beauty

References

Chapter 11 Beautiful History: Visualizing Wikipedia

Depicting Group Editing

History Flow in Action

Chromogram: Visualizing One Person at a Time

Conclusion

Chapter 12 Turning a Table into a Tree: Growing Parallel Sets into a Purposeful Project

Categorical Data

Parallel Sets

Visual Redesign

A New Data Model

The Database Model