Tufte’s Granddad

Are you in need for holiday presents in the office and on a tight budget? Why not go back in time and shop for books out of copyright. The Internet Archive is here to help. Check out Willard Cope Brinton: Graphic presentation (1939), and delve into an ancestor to the Tufte books.

You can read this [...]

HISTORICAL BUBBLE GRAPHS

There are not only statistical bubble graphs. Look at this historical one! It isn’t perfect (some countries are not represented, information could be much more elaborate), but amazing!

Thanks Nicolas for this hint.

An even better population pyramid

Today Statistics Germany published their latest population projection until the year 2060. Together with this data the animated population pyramid was updated as well.
Most notable is a new layout that will put the assumptions right beside the pyramid and will let you switch between four different scenarios for the future (different assumptions for: fertility, life-expectancy, [...]

World Bank public data, now in Google search

From The Official Google Blog:

11/11/2009 11:00:00 AM

When we first launched public data on Google.com, we wanted to make statistics easier to find and to encourage debate based on facts rather than intuition. The day after we launched, a friend who worked at the World Bank called me, her voice filled with enthusiasm, “Did you know [...]

eXplorer and Booklets for tell-a-story over the Internet

NCVA (National Center for Visual Analysis) at Linköping University develops dynamic visualization publishing – a  “statistical-story-telling” approach based on dynamic visualization “booklets” that are embedded into Web pages as HTML code. NCVA collaborates with its partners OECD, Eurostat, Statistics Denmark, Statistics Sweden and the city of Göteborg.
The software used is [...]

World Bank Data Visualizer

World bank launches an interactive visualizing tool resembling gapminder, it’s called Data Visualizer.

‘The time series used in Data Visualizer is a subset of 2009 World Development Indicators database. It contains 49 indicators for 209 countries and 18 aggregates from 1960-2007. Data includes social, economic, financial, information & technology, and environmental indicators.’
Tools allow to change the [...]

Google’s Interest in Statistics

Google’s interest in statistics is steadily growing. And this not least because Ola Rosling now works with Google and pushes visualization tools like motion chart and the public-data project.
In his presentation at the Gov 2.0 in Washington (September 2009) Ola Rosling presents theese tools: Ola Rosling, “Seeing Data as Change Over Time”

Accessing [...]

Just published: Web 2.0/3.0 and Official Statistics

Statistical Journal of the IAOS 2008
Volume 25, n° 3-4/2008

Special Issue: Web 2.0 and Official Statistics

Editorial, pp. 79-80
GARDNER Jessica – Blogs, wikis and official statistics: New perspectives on the use of Web 2.0 by statistical offices, pp. 81-92
Abstract

THYGESEN Lars, SUNDGREN Bo – Innovative approaches to turning statistics into knowledge, pp. 93-102
Abstract

TEN BOSCH Olav, DE JONGE [...]

Open Data Initiative – Free SuperVIEW hosting of data

From Space-Time Research blog:

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 2009

Open Data Initiative – Free SuperVIEW hosting of data

Space-Time Research this week launched a new program called the Open Data Initiative at the International Statistical Institute (ISI) 2009 conference in Durban.

What is the Open Data Initiative?

The Open Data Initiative is a Web 2.0 site for disseminating public data. [...]

GAPMINDER NEWS

Documentary on Hans Rosling available on-line (now full version)
The TV documentary Rosling’s World is now posted on the website of the Swedish Public Service Television (SVT) website, with English subtitles.

Direct link to Video on Svt.se
Read more on Gapminder.org

The documentary, by the journalist Pär Fjällström, follows Hans Rosling preparing his lecture at the 2009 TED conference. [...]

Datablog – News – guardian.co.uk

World carbon emissions, by country

Click on image for big picture Image: World Resources Institute
Datablog Full figures, for every country in the world
Continue reading… 3 comments

Posted by Simon Rogers 15.15 BST

US emissions, compared to the world’s

Roll over lines to get the data. How bad are US carbon emissions? These [...]

“Rosling’s World: The best statistics you’ve ever seen” (from Swedish Television)

Hans Rosling in action. Foto: TED.com
Rosling’s World: The best statistics you’ve ever seen
Hans Rosling is a professor in international health, who has made an unlikely global success. His presentations on global development evokes laughter, rejoice and reflections. People with power, like Al Gore or Bill Clinton, ask for his advice. He wants everyone to question [...]

“Tourist Maps” of statistics on Slovenia

In Slovenia we’ve recently published the Interactive Statistical Atlas of Slovenia – an online tool for presenting statistical data on maps. It was basically developed for “tourists” (less experienced users), to help them view regional statistical data in a clear and easily understood way.
Demo: Population ageing in Slovenia

You can enter the application from the entry [...]

Telling a story with a graph

Making statistical data understandable and usable is one of the fundamental principles for producers of official data. Visualisation plays a big role in this and visualisation topics belong to the most intensively discussed. But as more and more specialists become involved the graphs also get more and more sophisticated and need explanations. Many people do [...]

Timetric Makes Web Data Useful with Time Series Analysis

Timetric Makes Web Data Useful with Time Series Analysis (from ReadWriteSTART)
Written by Jolie O’Dell / August 5, 2009 8:40 PM / 0 Comments
« Prior Post

This post is part of our ReadWriteStart channel, which is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. The channel is sponsored [...]

“Journalism Needs Data in 21st Century”

This is an interesting summary from ReadWriteWeb about the role of data in media with several fresh innovative examples coming up 2009.  Some of them have already been presented before as posts in this blog. The conclusion is that journalism is data-driven and demands open access to raw data. Data should be transparent and not [...]

Spezify: Search Engine for Visualized Statistics?

Stockholm-based startup Spezify is a visual search engine that impresses with relevant results displayed in a visual but still functional way.
Founded by Felix af Ekenstam and Per Persson, digital creatives who have over 10 years of experience in the space, Spezify arrived in beta in April and launched officially about six weeks ago. Results are [...]

Infographics that People Understand – Book Review

Stephen Few in his Blog ‘Visual Business Intelligence’ is enthusiastic about a new book dealing with information visualisation: ‘At Last, a Scientific Approach to Infographics‘.
The book written by Connie Malamed: Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand,
Rockport Publishers, Inc., 2009.

To build an ecosystem of data on the Web

Using statistical data to explain the world, telling stories with statistical data, visualizing statistical data to make these data accessible in a quick and instructive manner – all these topics are well known and belong to  long and intensive discussions and activities in many institutions of official statistics. Results can be seen on the websites [...]

Yahoo Pipes – still going strong

Mixing up several web services into a new web service – a mashup -  is made easy with Yahoo Pipes (see earlier post).
Yahoo Pipes is also capable of integrating csv-files and with this becomes interesting for statistics (globalizes official statistics).
An example with data from the US census Bureau:

Another one for UK Cities

This example used an [...]