Fantastic stuff! Wish I had some of those talents. But for the time related stuff people doing these kinds of things should single out some of the things that have definate beginnings and ends (that's a real strong indicator of emergence) and put them into the context of their original and final developmental processes (extending the window to their *whole* bump on the curve, even if you only have data for a part). You can't always single them out, but when you can it gives you a way to ask well directed questions that make it easier to peer inside them to see what's happening.
> > Pardon the expression, but there seems to be a real "surge" in infographics > and visual statistics news in recent days. This post on Tim O'Reilly > blog<http://radar.oreilly.com>(an increasingly informative site, I > find) points us to some interesting > tools out of the IBM shop. Be sure to check out the site for "Many Eyes." > Impressive, and highly informative visualization of useful data. > IBM Wants Many Eyes on > Visualization<http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Er/oreilly/radar/atom/% 7E3/80299451/ibm_wants_many.html> > Posted: 23 Jan 2007 11:25 AM CST > http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/01/ibm_wants_many.html > > By Tim O'Reilly > > IBM today announced Many > Eyes<http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/home>, > a site for sharing and commenting on visualizations. Martin > Wattenberg<http://www.bewitched.com/research.html>, > who developed the original version of the > treemap<http://www.smartmoney.com/marketmap/>we use for our book > market visualizations as well as the awesome baby > name voyager <http://babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html>, and Fernanda > Viegas <http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/fernanda.html>, who worked with > him on the equally awesome history flow visualizations of > Wikipedia<http://www.research.ibm.com/visual/projects/history_flow/>, > are the geniuses behind this project. > > [image: Many Eyes home page] > <http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/ManyEyeshome_page.html> > > As with swivel <http://www.swivel.com/>, users can upload any data set, but > the tools for visualizing and graphing the data are much richer. The > visualization > options<https://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/page/Visualization _Options.html>include > US and World maps, line graphs, stack graphs, bar charts, block > histograms, bubble diagrams, scatter plots, network diagrams, pie charts, > and treemaps. The site isn't yet live, but should be very shortly. > Meanwhile, you can get a good sense of the types of graphs available by > checking out the visualization > gallery<http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/browse/visualizatio ns> > . > > I asked Martin and Fernanda how they compared themselves to swivel, and > Fernanda replied: > > You also asked if we see our site as "Swivel for visualization". That phrase > isn't quite accurate (any more than Swivel is "Many Eyes for data" ;- ). Both > our site and Swivel are examples of a broader phenomenon, which we call > "social data analysis," where playful, social exploration of data leads to > serious analysis. At the same time the two sites fall on different ends of a > spectrum. Swivel seems to have some neat data mining technology that finds > correlations automatically. By contrast, we've placed our emphasis on the > power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. My guess is that both > approaches will be successful because social data analysis is a powerful > idea. > > Martin added: > > In Many Eyes our goal is to "democratize" visualization by offering it as a > simple service. We also think that there's something special about > visualizations that gets people talking, so we placed a big emphasis in > design and technology to let people have conversations around the > visualizations. > > Personally, I'd love to see swivel and manyeyes working together, as swivel > already has some great data sets, but has only a limited number of graphing > tools. But that's an exercise for the future. For now, data wonks can just > rejoice that both sites exist, and should start exploring, and as Martin > says, conversing about what they find. I love both of these sites. > > -- tj > > ========================================== > J. T. Johnson > Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA > www.analyticjournalism.com > 505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h) > http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. > To change something, build a new model that makes the > existing model obsolete." > -- Buckminster Fuller > ========================================== > > -- Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ tel: 212-795-4844 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] explorations: www.synapse9.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
