Best of the visualisation web… December 2011 (part 1)

At the end of each month I pull together a collection of links to some of the most relevant, interesting or thought-provoking web content I’ve come across during the previous month. If you follow me on Twitter and Google+ you will see many of these items shared as soon as I find them.

Here’s part one of the latest collection from December 2011 (see part two):

Vis4.net | Gregor provides a comprehensive guide to how to properly choropleth map colour classifications | Tutorial

Nederland Van Boven | Visualisation project which projects and maps the potential accessible locations you could travel from a given location using a start point and set journey time | Interactive Visualisation

Core77 | Interview with Matt Webb, the CEO of Berg, with a focus on the exciting new device the “Little Printer” | Interview

Flowing Data | Video of Shan Carter (New York Times) speaking about telling stories with data | Video

Sociable Physics | This movie shows a heatmap of London Bikeshare activity over the course of an average day | Animated Visualisation

Excel Charts | Jorge Camoes attempts to recreate famous William Playfair visualisations | Static Visualisation

Junk Charts | Demonstration of statistical adjustment in charts, specifically maps | Article

Infosthetics | Video of Amanda Cox (New York Times) talking about developing infographics at the paper and explains some of the lessons they have learnt | Video

Guardian | In a new series Nathan Green shows how statistics can help make sense of life’s perplexing data and distinguish facts from distortions | Article

Guardian | Riot rumours: how misinformation spread on Twitter during a time of crisis. Interactive piece from the Guardian which includes a helpful guide to explain how it was created | Type

Stamen | Stamen project about the Californian Health Care Foundation | Project Overview

Visual.ly Blog | Very helpful and thorough article about colour theory | Theory

Discover Magazine | Visualising a geogmagnetic storm via an animation based on the converted sounds, really is quite mesmerising as it says in the title | Animated Visualisation

Brainpickings | 7 Essential Books on Data Visualization & Computational Art | Resources

Substratum | Substratum is a series of genuinely interesting and inspiring interviews with THE biggest names in the field | Interview

O’Reilly Radar | Article/interview with GreenGoose founder with Brian Krejcarek about his company’s small stickers which have built in sensors connected to the internet and the potential for the data collected | Interview

Bloomberg Business | Profile of Tableau co-founder Pat Hanrahan – “The former Pixar engineer applies some graphics magic to spreadsheets” | Article

The Atlantic | “Ending the infographic plague”. Kind of explains the angle of this piece | Article

O’Reilly Radar | “Don’t blame the information for your bad habits” – Article/Interview with Clay Johnson on info overload vs. info overconsumption.| Interview

Hadley Wickham | The boxplot plot has been around for over 40 years and this paper summarises the improvements, extensions and variations since Tukey first introduced his ‘schematic plot in 1970 | Paper

Forbes | Naomi Robbins encourages users to think outside of the chart menus to avoid the mistake of choosing the wrong graph type for the data | Type

Vimeo | The ECOSPHERE is a real-time Twitter visualisation made for CNN inspired by the plant world and based on the laws of nature. This video explains about the engine behind the Ecosphere project | Video

UI Transitions | “Meaningful Transitions deals with the use of animations in the user interface, documenting transitions in a clustered way to show at which point transitions can be a helpful extension to a static user interface, because of cognitive benefits to enhance the user experience” | Site

Spatial Analysis | The best map based visualisations of 2011 | Visualisation Collection

Digital Humanities Specialist | Detailed article about the three pillars of Digital Humanities research: Text Analysis, Spatial Analysis and Network Analysis | Theory

Prezi | Prezi from Jojo Malig about data-driven journalism and data visualisation | Presentation

Revolutions Blog | Mapping prosperity in France using R | Static Visualisation

Fell In Love With Data | Intgerview with Jorge Camoes about his experiences using Excel for data visualisations | Interview

Flowing Data | Another classic in the long (and increasing) line of dodgy visualisation examples from Fox News | Static Visualisation

Vis4.net | Another excellent article by Gregor Aisch about the some important perceptions about the equidistance of colours | Theory


Presenting the top five most popular posts on Visualising Data during the past month:

The worst visualisation I’ve seen this year? Google Zeitgeist 2011 – December 16th, 2011

10 significant visualisation developments: July to December 2011 – December 19th, 2011

O’Reilly Strata Conference, Santa Clara 2012 (20% reader discount) – December 9th, 2011

Best of the visualisation web… November 2011 (part 1) – December 5th, 2011

Best of the visualisation web… November 2011 (part 2) – December 5th, 2011