First maps were of the sky
Cave paintings at Lascaux contain star maps
Image from flickr user williamcromar
Maps of land came later.
There seem to be several contenders for the first town map
But here is a frequently cited example from Konya, Turkey in 6200 BCE
This graph by an unknown author attempts to show the movement of the planets over time.
I can't vouch for its accuracy.
Rene Descartes – invents the Cartesian coordinate system
This has significant impact on how we visualize quantitative information
William Playfair is credited with inventing statistical graphics.
He invented the Bar Chart
This is a later example that shows the rise in the price of wheat along with the rise in wages over time
Ben Schneiderman invented the treemap as a way to visualize usage of his Macintosh's hard drive.
It's useful for displaying hierarchical data
Hans Rosling invents the Motion Bubble Chart – which is now part of Google's visualization API
An interactive chart that displays several variables at once and animates changes over time.
It's featured in a popular TED talk
Flickr user ketmonkey
Image from Casey Fleser
An Osborne Executive portable computer, from 1982 with a Zilog Z80 4MHz CPU, and a 2007 Apple iPhone with a 412MHz ARM11 CPU. The Executive weighs 100 times as much, is nearly 500 times as large by volume, costs approximately 10 times as much (adjusting for inflation), and has 1/100th the clock frequency of the phone.
Flickr user ketmonkey
1913 London Underground Map - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/clive.billson/tubemaps/1913.html
Here is an example of a data visualization (or map) that is accurate but may not work well for its intended purpose.
Things to notice
It's a standard map project
Subway lines appear where they would geographically if they were on the surface
Roads, various municipal boundaries are visible.
It works but it's not optimal
Harry Beck's 1933 Underground Map
Beck took a step back
Considered the problem that the subway map was attempting to solve
What matters are relation of stops and transfer stations to each other
Legibility of stop names – where to get on and off
Subway is underground – don't need roads
For simplicity and legibility lines are drawn at 90 and 45 degree angles
– Similar to electrical circuit diagrams
http://sites.google.com/site/tombowersites/harry-beck
2010 Boston T Map
This basic design is so successful that it is still used for subway maps around the world
Scatterplot – takes advantage of 2D spatial position
Line chart also takes advantage of 2D spatial position. Line chart is really a scatterplot with lines draw between points in some sequence.
Bar chart takes advantage of line length and 2D spatial position
Beyond asking good questions. Knowing the attributes that make for effective display of quantitative data, what are some guidelines etc. for visualizing data. There’s no magic bullet for creating effective data visualizations. It takes practice and experimentation. But there are some guiding principles that we help get you moving in the right direction.
Excel, Google Docs, Google Visualization API,
Somewhat like google gadgets but more powerful.
Google Visualization API
Collection of JavaScript visualizations
You can customize and embed in web pages
Requires some programming know-how
Relatively simple Javascript embedded in a web page generates the chart.
Can modify this directly and create a chart, but the data will be static.
Relatively simple Javascript embedded in a web page generates the chart.
Can modify this directly and create a chart, but the data will be static.
