Data Stories

Data Stories

By Enrico Bertini and Moritz StefanerTechnologyEducationArtsVisual Arts
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Data Stories episodes

  • 022  |  NYT Graphics and D3 with Mike Bostock and Shan Carter

    Hi everyone,

    We have graphic editors Mike Bostock and Shan Carter in this dense and long episode. It’s great to finally have someone from the New York Times!

    We talk about many practical and more philosophical aspects of publishing interactive visualizations on the web. We also spend quite some time discussing the past, present and future of D3.js.

    (On a side note: apologies for starting a bit abruptly and for the weird noises. Enrico was desperately and unsuccessfully trying to find a quiet and calm spot at the CHI conference.)

    Take Care,

    Enrico & Mo.

    P.S. Many thanks to all of you guys who sent us Twitter questions for Mike and Shan.

    —

    Episode Chapters

    00:00:00 Intro

    00:00:12 Our guests today: New York Times graphics editors Mike Bostocks and Shan Carter
    00:01:54 About the NYT graphics department
    00:06:56 Map wrangling
    00:08:47 QA, evaluation, fact checking,…
    00:11:23 Twitter question: Post the data set along with the graphic?
    00:15:51 Exploratory or explanatory?
    00:19:56 User tracking, user feedback
    00:25:53 Balance of familiarity vs. new visual vocabularies
    00:29:52 Workflow, on the example of the 512 paths graphic
    00:38:05 Hybrid workflows between automation and manual layout
    00:45:12 d3
    00:45:49 History and philosophy
    00:56:19 Value of examples
    00:57:31 Community adoption
    00:59:25 Vega
    01:04:53 More d3 books or tutorials for advanced users?
    01:08:15 Developer community
    01:09:45 Sustainability
    01:11:51 Future development
    01:15:10 Enrico is back!
    01:16:13 Is d3 complete?
    01:18:52 When does Mike sleep?
    01:19:45 Wrapping it up

    Links to discussed NYT projects

      • 512 Paths to the White House / Shan’s talk on the making of 512 paths
      • Over the Decades, How States Have Shifted
      • China Still Dominates, but Some Manufacturers Look Elsewhere
      • Among the Oscar Contenders, a Host of Connections
      • Ralf Straumann on hexagonal cartograms

        •  

        Related episodes
        • Xenographics with Maarten Lambrechts
        • svelte.js for web-based dataviz with Amelia Wattenberger

        1 hr 22 min
      • 021  |  Can visualization save the world? With Kim Rees and Jake Porway

        Hi all,

        We have two fantastic guests to talk about using visualization for the good. We actually decided to make it even bigger and provokingly titled it: can visualization save the world?

        We have on stage: Kim Rees co-founder of Periscopic, a data visualization company guided by the motto: “do good with data,” and Jake Porway, founder of Data Kind, an organization that brings together data scientists and social organizations.

        We discuss the challenges of working in this world of big data opportunities and the risks and potentially negative implications of using big data.

        Chapters

        00:00:00 Intro, welcome to our guests Kim Rees (Periscopic) and Jake Porway (Datakind)

        00:01:39 Can data visualization save the world?
        00:04:44 Periscopic
        00:05:38 Jake & Datakind
        00:09:32 Visualization as a process
        00:15:17 How do you pick projects to work on?
        00:18:01 Periscopic’s U.S. gun deaths visualization
        00:30:08 Awareness alone does not help – how you get people to action?
        00:32:57 On process
        00:40:12 Multiple truths in same data
        00:42:53 Responsible authorship
        00:45:19 Parallels between data visualization and “photo journalism”?
        00:46:12 Responsible data and visualization authorship ctd.
        00:50:03 Project votesmart
        00:51:39 NYT graphics jobs report
        00:53:15 Success stories?
        01:05:33 Refuse to work for potentially unethic clients?
        01:08:28 “The dark side of datakind”
        01:09:06 Back to original question
        01:13:18 Concerns in visualizing personal stories
        01:24:59 Wrapping it up

        Links

        • Periscopic’s Gun Murders Visualization
        • Jake’s article: “You Can’t Just Hack Your Way to Social Change”
        • Jer Thorp’s Visualization as Process Article
        • Book: Raw Data Is An Oxymoron
        • The Stop, Question and Frisk Data
        • Biases in creating data
        • Project Votesmart
        • NYT vis of job market interpretation
        • Map of gun owners

          •  

          Related episodes
          • Data Visualization at Capital One with Kim Rees and Steph Hay

          1 hr 27 min
        • 20 | On Maps. With Michal Migurski.

          Hi all,

          In this episode we talk about maps and map technology. How it evolved and revolutionized the way we think about geography. We have Michal Migurski with us! He is former technology head at Stamen and creator of multiple successful visualizations libraries and tools like Modest Maps and Crimespotting.

          Episode Chapters

          00:00:00 Intro

          00:03:06 Our guest: Mike Migurski
          00:04:45 How did Mike get started with computers?
          00:06:16 Raving in the 90s
          00:07:02 The beginnings of Stamen
          00:13:49 Oakland Crimespotting
          00:14:58 A short history of online mapping
          00:17:04 Google maps
          00:20:19 Open Street Map
          00:24:31 Everyblock
          00:26:51 Oakland Crimespotting pt.2
          00:32:42 Tools and frameworks – modest maps
          00:34:29 Polymaps
          00:36:30 Cloudmade
          00:38:23 Leaflet.js
          00:39:57 Mapnik
          00:43:12 d3.geo
          00:46:17 How to make geo data accessible in a better way
          00:49:56 Automatic labeling
          00:51:39 @alignedleft: What is a map tile?
          00:55:42 @janwillemtulp: Question on process and inspiration, future trend
          00:58:07 @petersonGIS: time ratio data processing vs visualization
          01:02:57 Wrapping it up

          Links

          Stamen’s Projects

          • Digg Labs Visualizations
          • Oakland Crimespotting

            • The Atlantic’s article on maps: 12 Fresh Ideas for Transforming the Places We Live With Open Data

            Tools and Frameworks

            • openstreetmaps
            • modestmaps
            • unfolding (like modestmaps, but for processing)
            • leaflet.js
            • polymaps
            • cloudmade
            • kartograph.js
            • mapnik
            • mapbox
            • tilemill
            • cartodb
            • d3.geo

              • Recent Mike’s Projects

              • Walking Papers
              • Field Papers
              • Green Means Go

                • Others

                • http://moveon.org
                • http://fundrace.org
                • http://www.everyblock.com/
                • http://www.smartchicagocollaborative.org/
                • http://gismaps.oaklandnet.com/crimewatch/

                  • —

                  Lots of links! Have fun with maps

                  1 hr 5 min
                • 19 | With Santiago Ortiz

                  Hi Folks,

                  We have Santiago Ortiz with us today. Santiago has an impressive array of data visualization projects he has been pouring out during the last year and a very unique style. See for yourself in his portfolio website: http://moebio.com/. We talk about the Tapestry Conference, mathematics, the business of data visualization and much much more. Enjoy it!

                  Chapters

                  00:00:00 Start

                  00:00:01 Intro: our guest today: Santiago Ortiz (@moebio)
                  00:01:55 Tapestry conference
                  00:08:40 Santiago: how it all began: Flash, math and teaching
                  00:11:34 Bestiario
                  00:13:23 Impure/Quadrigram
                  00:14:17 Freelance since 2012
                  00:17:12 Yay for self-inititated projects!
                  00:20:56 Knowledge visualization
                  00:25:11 “Santiago style”
                  00:26:36 Client work
                  00:31:18 Tools, frameworks, open source
                  00:40:52 On process
                  00:51:47 Non-information-based projects
                  00:55:23 The role of math
                  01:06:41 Regional differences in the data visualization scenes?
                  01:17:13 Wrapping it up

                  Episode’s Links

                  Tapestry Conference

                  Scott McCloud
                  Pat Hanrahan
                  Nigel Holmes
                  Enrico’s live notes from tapestry
                  Jonathan Corum’s slides

                  Santiago and his work

                  his portfolio: http://moebio.com/
                  his past company: http://www.bestiario.org/
                  Lostalgic (ABC’s LOST TV show): http://intuitionanalytics.com/other/lostalgic/
                  Love is patient (merging faces with voronoi shapes): http://moebio.com/loveispatient/
                  http://moebio.com/research/faces/

                  Processing library

                  giCenterUtils: http://gicentre.org/utils/

                  Vis people with math background

                  Jason Davies: http://www.jasondavies.com/
                  Jen Lowe: http://www.datatelling.com/

                  Hilbert Curves and Vis

                  Wikipedia page on HC
                  Martin Wattemberg’s Jigsaw Maps
                  Daniel Keim’s Pixel-Oreinted Visualizations

                  1 hr 19 min
                • 018  |  Happy Birthday, Data Stories!

                  What can we say? One year has passed and it looks crazy we have been doing this thing for a whole year: 18 whole episodes. Thanks a lot everyone for your encouragements and numerous comments and suggestions. And big thanks to all the people who participated!

                  In this episode we review the whole set of posts and comment on them trying to see how they look like from a distance now that some time has passed.

                  If you have any suggestions on stuff you would like to see in DS in the next year LET US KNOW!

                  Chapters:

                  00:00:00 Happy Birthday Data Stories!

                  00:02:19 On naming episodes and the Andy effect
                  00:04:44 01: Animated Data Kitsch
                  00:06:54 02: Ranting about marathons, challenges and awards
                  00:09:45 03: Evaluation
                  00:15:11 04: Malofiej
                  00:17:27 05: Learning data visualization with Andy Kirk
                  00:21:22 06: Food
                  00:22:49 07: Color
                  00:23:25 08: Interview with Jeff Heer
                  00:24:51 09: Bridging academia and industry
                  00:25:41 10: Stefanie Posavec
                  00:26:49 11: emoto
                  00:27:29 12: Alberto Cairo
                  00:29:52 13: visweek
                  00:31:20 14: Google hangout episode
                  00:33:22 15: Robert Kosara
                  00:35:27 16: 2012 review
                  00:37:24 17: Data Sculptures
                  00:38:52 What’s up next

                  45 min
                • 017  |  Data Sculptures

                  Hi,

                  In this episode we talk about Data Sculptures, also known as Physical Visualization. We invite Pierre Dragicevic and Yvonne Jansen (from the Aviz Lab at INRIA in Paris) to talk about their experiments with physical bar charts and their fantastic collections of physical visualizations.

                  Pierre and Yvonne give several demos you can see on our recorded video. Make sure you don’t miss Pierre giving a real-time demo of Jacques Bertin’s reorderable matrix!

                  Episode Chapters

                  • 00:00:00 Intro
                  • 00:01:08 Topic: Data Sculptures with Yvonne Jansen and Pierre Dragicevic
                  • 00:04:01 Studies on legibility of physical 3D data visualizations
                  • 00:12:45 Pros and cons of rapid prototyping vs. subsurface engraving
                  • 00:16:57 Broader perspective: How did Pierre and Yvonne get Pierre and Yvonne’s motivation, and general characterization of the field
                  • 00:22:04 Their project collections at: http://www.aviz.fr/Research/PassivePhysicalVisualizations and http://www.aviz.fr/Research/ActivePhysicalVisualizations
                  • 00:27:26 Bertin’s reorderable matrix
                  • 00:35:00 Slow data
                  • 00:37:30 Back to Bertin and physical manpulation of data
                  • 00:39:04 Social aspects
                  • 00:39:47 Future perspective
                  • 00:41:21 Digital fabrication techniques
                  • 00:49:45 Online services
                  • 00:50:27 FabLabs
                  • 00:54:17 Accessibility aspects
                  • 00:55:33 Practical applications
                  • 00:57:54 Shapeshifting displays and materials
                  • 01:05:46 Early examples and the great books from W. Brinton
                  • 01:09:20 Wrap up

                    • Links:

                    • (Forgotten) Brinton’s book on Graphic Presentation
                    • Compostable and water-soluble 3d printing 
                    • PLA Printing (most environmentally friendly material made from corn starch or sugar)
                    • MIT Shape Displays
                    • Programmable matter (with demo)

                      • 1 hr 11 min
                    • 016  |  What Was Big in 2012 and What Is Coming in 2013

                      Happy New Year Friends!

                      We invited a few experts in a Google Hangout to discuss what was big in 2012 and what will happen in 2013. We have Andrew Vande Moere from Infosthetics, Andy Kirk from Visualisingdata and Bryan Connor from The Why Axis.

                      Chapters Breakdown:

                      00:00:00 Intro

                      00:01:22 Our guests: Andrew Vande Moere from http//infosthetics.com
                      00:02:07 Andy Kirk from visualisingdata.com
                      00:03:07 Bryan Connor from the Why Axis
                      00:03:51 What was big in 2012 and what is coming 2013
                      00:04:05 More education and training
                      00:05:05 Technical issues…
                      00:06:05 More general interest in learning data visualization
                      00:07:01 Mike Bostock and d3
                      00:07:55 Alberto Cairo’s online infographics course
                      00:09:06 Mike Bostock and d3 again
                      00:10:32 Integrated print <-> interactive workflows
                      00:11:28 Democratization
                      00:14:58 Academic trends?
                      00:15:40 Visualization as a tool for communication
                      00:21:02 The human touch
                      00:22:39 Storytelling: people are actually doing it now
                      00:25:10 Woops – there he goes…
                      00:25:28 Tools for storytelling
                      00:26:30 So-called “network problems”
                      00:27:07 Snow Fall by NYT
                      00:31:49 More tools for storytelling and the return of “multimedia”
                      00:33:03 More case studies and behind the scenes reports
                      00:35:11 Less blogging in 2012?
                      00:42:46 Santiago Ortiz — @moebio
                      00:43:41 emoto
                      00:44:58 Real-time data visualization
                      00:49:28 Reaching wider audiences
                      00:50:14 Conferences, marathons, competitions
                      00:54:22 Simon Scarr
                      00:55:15 Wishes for 2013
                      01:01:05 Guest wishes for 2013

                      Mentioned Links:

                      d3

                      http://d3js.org
                      http://bost.ocks.org/mike/

                      Democratization of infographics

                      http://www.re.vu
                      http://visualize.me
                      http://visual.ly
                      http://venngage.com
                      https://www.vizify.com/
                      http://www.easel.ly/
                      http://infogr.am/

                      Visualization as a tool for communication

                      http://www.aviz.fr/bayes – visualization for bayesian reasoning

                      The human touch

                      http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/1274/ – sketchy rendering
                      http://nathaliemiebach.com
                      http://itsbeenreal.co.uk
                      http://www.densitydesign.org

                      Narratives

                      https://popcorn.webmaker.org
                      sStory by EJ Fox

                      Snow Fall

                      http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/

                      Less blogging?

                      http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/blog/?p=644

                      Santiago Ortiz

                      http://moebio.com

                      emoto

                      http://blog.emoto2012.org

                      Realtime data visualization

                      http://hint.fm/wind/

                      Reaching wider audiences

                      http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2012/may/08/gay-rights-united-states

                      Conferences

                      visualized, eyeo, visualizing marathon, information is beautiful award…

                      Simon Scarr

                      https://twitter.com/SimonScarr

                      —

                      Have fun and Happy New Year!!!

                      Related episodes
                      • Data Vis Around the World in 2016

                      1 hr 7 min
                    • 15 | With Robert Kosara

                      Hi all,

                      We got Robert Kosara on Data Stories for this episode. Robert is the editor of eagereyes.org, one of the most respected and well-known data visualization blogs in the Internet. He is known for his controversial and informative posts and his “academic” style (some people say :)).

                      But Roberts, as he says in the show, wears many hats. He was a Professor of Computer Science at UNC Charlotte until recently when he surprisingly moved to Tableau after being tenured.

                      In the show we talk about his choice and many other things: viz research, blogging, Tableau, etc. See the episode breakdown below.

                      And, as usual, have fun!

                      Enrico & Moritz

                      —

                      00:00:00 Enrico and Moritz catching up

                      00:04:22 Today’s guest: Robert Kosara
                      00:05:23 eagereyes.org and blogging in general
                      00:08:14 Enrico’s blog
                      00:09:46 Robert’s research themes
                      00:11:35 Blur as a retinal variable?
                      00:13:13 Interdisciplinarity in infovis research
                      00:14:31 How Robert got started
                      00:19:04 Early years of eagereyes.org and abandoned plans for the site
                      00:21:59 “lines in the sand”
                      00:27:04 What will the future bring for eagereyes?
                      00:30:58 State of visualization blogging
                      00:33:16 Blogging and academic careers
                      00:36:17 Openness and sharing ideas
                      00:43:04 The real story! Robert’s move to Tableau
                      00:51:22 Researching: storytelling with data
                      00:55:40 Visualization in wider communication contexts and workflows
                      00:59:13 Tableau for Mac?
                      01:01:36 A few ideas for improvement
                      01:03:12 Clevelandgate
                      01:08:16 Future for word clouds as a final slide for powerpoint presentations?
                      01:10:14 Robert’s influences?
                      01:13:38 How much work was it to release Parallel Sets, and was it worth it?
                      01:16:13 Wrapping it up

                      1 hr 18 min
                    • 014  |  Data Stories Hangout

                      Hi there,

                      We just finished recording the hangout. 10 people joined it and some more followed the stream off-line. If you wanted to participate and you could not — we are sorry but there is a limit of maximum 10 people imposed by Google.

                      We really enjoyed the hangout and it was a fantastic experiment full of interesting questions and comments.

                      Among others, we had Kim Rees from Periscopic, Benjamin Wiederkehr from Interactive Things, Santiago Ortiz, Stephen Boyd, Miska Knapek, Wes Grubbs from Pitch Interactive, Karen Doore from UT Dallas, Yuri Engelhardt and Jim Vallandingham on the show… Quite a mixture!

                      Unfortunately, as with any experiment, something can go wrong and it went wrong: we totally screwed up the video part by having Benjamin Wiederkehr in focus all the time instead of switching between the participants. For this reason we turned down the video part and kept the audio. The gist is still there!

                      We’ll hopefully get it right the next time

                      Enrico & Mo.

                      1 hr 6 min
                    • 013  |  from Visweek 2012

                      Hey Folks!

                      I managed to grab a couple of buddies at VisWeek and record a (low audio quality – sorry) episode with some on-the-spot comments. Andrew Vande Moere (infosthetics.com) and Jerome Cukier joined me to have some fun and indulge in some gossiping.

                      A few papers we mention in the episode (may be not complete):

                      • How Capacity Limits of Attention Influence Information Visualization Effectiveness. [Best Paper award]. Steve Haroz, David Whitney.
                      • Evaluating the Effect of Style in Information Visualization. Vande Moere et al.
                      • Investigating Physical Visualizations. Yvonne Jansen et al.
                      • Sketchy Rendering for Information Visualization. Jo Wood et al.

                        • Have fun! And hey … big big thank yous to all the data stories listeners who stopped me to say hi. I loved it!

                        -Enrico.

                        P.S. Moritz was not there and lots of people asked me about him. What can I do? Just let him know how much you want to see him (he will hate me for writing this ;))!

                        Related episodes
                        • Highlights from IEEE VIS'22 with Tamara Munzner

                        49 min

                      About Data Stories

                      From the publisher's feed

                      A podcast on data and how it affects our lives — with Enrico Bertini and Moritz Stefaner