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Where Infographics Are Going

By Robert Kosara On January 26, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Blog 2012

At their best, information graphics can be informative, exciting, and attractive. At their worst, they can be misleading, overdesigned, and empty. Infographics are still in their infancy, with a lot of untapped potential. Ideas from visualization can help figure out a future that is much more exciting.

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The State of Information Visualization, 2012

By Robert Kosara On January 22, 2012 · 13 Comments · In Blog 2012

Another year has come and gone, and many exciting things have happened in information visualization. Here is a look back at some interesting events from last year, as well as what I expect for 2012 and the next few years.

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Tableau Software

Hello from Tableau (and Seattle)!

By Robert Kosara On January 18, 2012 · 6 Comments · In Blog 2012
I am spending the entire year 2012 in Seattle, working with Tableau Software. The topics I will be working on include storytelling and Tableau Public, plus some super-secret projects even I don't know yet (mostly because we haven't decided on them).
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ZIPScribble Map, interactive version

An Interactive Version of the ZIPScribble Map

On January 15, 2012 By Robert Kosara
For more than five years, the ZIPScribble Map and its related pages have been the most popular feature on my website. To freshen things up a bit, I am adding an interactive version that runs in your browser. I have also added a few more countries, for a new total of 38.
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The Interactive ZIPScribble Map

On January 15, 2012 By Robert Kosara
The idea behind the ZIPScribble Map is simple: Connect all the ZIP or postal codes in a country in ascending order. Does that produce chaos or some kind of pattern? Use this interactive map to explore.
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Obama Approval Ratings as Area Chart

Embracing Uncertainty in Two-Line Charts

On January 11, 2012 By Robert Kosara

As we’re heading towards elections again, there is a chart type that is as unavoidable as political ads, baby-kissing, and smear campaigns: line charts showing polling data. The most common pitch two candidates against each other, and often make a big deal out of the fact that the lines cross. Not only are these charts misleading in the way they depict the choice, they also hide an important fact: the number of undecided voters.

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New Posting Frequency for 2012

On January 8, 2012 By Robert Kosara

In my enthusiasm about switching to WordPress, I made the mistake of tweeting about potentially increasing my posting frequency in 2012. While I have tried to stick to a roughly weekly schedule in the past, there have been weeks when I did not write anything. My hope is to increase the frequency to roughly twice a week and see how that goes. John Peltier and Jorge Camoes are planning on doing the same.

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Book review for Science Magazine

My Review of Visualize This and Visual Complexity for Science Magazine

On January 4, 2012 By Robert Kosara
I was asked to write a review of two recent visualization books for Science: Nathan Yau's Visualize This and Manuel Lima's Visual Complexity. The piece appeared in the last issue of 2011, right before Christmas. Below is a link and some additional comments on the review and the two books.
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New Features

Why I Switched From Drupal to WordPress

On January 2, 2012 By Robert Kosara
After more than five years, switching the content management system (CMS) on eagereyes was not an easy decision. I've been thinking about doing that for a while though, and I want to explain my reasons and what I expect WordPress to do better than Drupal below. This should also be useful for anybody who is on the fence about starting a blog (or has a blog that hasn't been updated in a while).
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plot.io

Plot.io

On December 30, 2011 By Robert Kosara
Data visualization startup Plot.io has been making some noise lately. From what I know so far, it looks a lot like Tableau, but presumably works in the browser. This could be a potential successor to Swivel, which folded a bit over a year ago, and maybe what Verifiable was trying to do.
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Comments Closed, Switching to WordPress

On December 21, 2011 By Robert Kosara

After more than five years, I’ve finally had it with Drupal. I’m switching the site to WordPress over the holidays. If you’re reading this through your feed reader, you should not notice a difference. The new site will look different and will have a few simple little features that will make it easier to browse. WordPress also is much more organized on the back-end, so I will hopefully be motivated to write more.

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List of Influences: Ben Shneiderman

On December 18, 2011 By Robert Kosara

Ben Shneiderman’s name has been with me through my entire computing life. In high school, we used to draw Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams to understand structured programming. In the HCI course at my university, his name was on the papers and book chapters we read. When I got into information visualization, he was still everywhere, with treemaps, the visual information seeking mantra, and many other greatly influential pieces of work. What follows below is Ben’s list of influences, in his own words.

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You Only See Colors You Can Name

On November 20, 2011 By Robert Kosara

While color is a purely visual phenomenon, the way we see color is not only a matter of our visual systems. It is well known that we are faster in telling colors apart that have different names, but do the names determine the colors or the colors the names? Recent work shows that language has a stronger influence than previously thought.
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New Series: Watchlist

On November 8, 2011 By Robert Kosara
Some of the most exciting work in our field is done by up-and-coming doctoral students, post-docs, and junior faculty members. In a new semi-regular series, I will highlight some of the people whose work I find particularly interesting and promising. The goal is to get their names onto people's radars earlier than this would have otherwise happened, in particular for those individuals who don't make a lot of noise about their work.
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Visualization is Growing Up

On November 6, 2011 By Robert Kosara
Several topics at this year's VisWeek conference have come up because visualization is playing a bigger role in important decisions. When the consequences can be severe, it is important to know whether a visualization actually works, whether we can trust it, and what biases it might present.
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← Previous Entries
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  • Recent Comments

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    • Robert Kosara on Hello from Tableau (and Seattle)!
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