Maps, Tools, & Stories

Nicolas Kruchten, Eng.

Staff Software Engineer at Datacratic

Author of PivotTable.js

Critiquing Visualizations

• 3 utilitarian lenses for looking at visualizations: as maps, as tools, and/or as stories
• (not as art, sorry)
• Inspired by Edward Tufte, Junk Charts , Flowing Data, Cartastrophe

Maps

Sources & Resources

• John Snow Archive
• http://donboyes.com/2011/10/14/john-snow-and-serendipity/
• Book: The Ghost Map

Does this visualization allow me to reason spatially about the data?

Sources & Resources

• Wikipedia: Hertzsprung–Russell diagrams
• Paper: A Remarkable Scatterplot

Sources & Resources

• http://nicolas.kruchten.com/content/2010/11/hackmtl/
• Software: Gephi

Tools

Does this visualization make it easier to accomplish the intended task with the data?

Sources & Resources

• http://www.petersmap.com/
• https://thegandr.wordpress.com/tag/peters-projection-vs-mercator-projection-comparison/

Source

Source

Stories

Do I understand what this visualization is saying about the data and do I believe it?

Sources & Resources

• http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/09/23/the-hubbert-peak-theory-of-rock-or-why-were-all-out-of-good-songs/
• Wikipedia: Peak Oil

Sources & Resources

• http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2012/
• Wikipedia: Cartograms

Source

Take-aways

• Can I look at this visualization as a map, a tool, and/or a story?
• Does this visualization allow me to reason spatially about the data?
• Does this visualization make it easier to accomplish the intended task with the data?
• Do I understand what this visualization is saying about the data and do I believe it?

Source

Fin