Blog 2014
eagereyes will be bloggier in 2015
I always mess with my site around the new year, and this year is no exception. In addition to a new theme, I've also been thinking about content. Here are some thoughts on what I want to do in 2015. Read more…
Data Stories starring Tamara Munzner
The latest episode of the Data Stories podcast has Tamara Munzner as the guest. They talk about her much-anticipated book, visualization taxonomies, and a lot more. It's a great episode, well worth listening to. Read more…
Review: Wainer, Picturing the Uncertain World
Picturing the Uncertain World by Howard Wainer is a book about statistics and statistical thinking, aided by visual depictions of data. Each article in the collection starts by stating a question or phenomenon, which is then investigated further using some clever statistics. Read more…
VIS 2014 Observations and Thoughts
While I’ve covered individual talks and events at IEEE VIS 2014, there are also some overall observations – positive and negative – I thought would be interesting to write down to see what others were thinking. Read more…
VIS 2014 – Friday
Wow, that was fast! VIS 2014 is already over. This year’s last day was shorter than in previous years, with just one morning session and then the closing session with the capstone talk. Read more…
VIS 2014 – Thursday
Thursday was the penultimate day of VIS 2014. I ended up only going to InfoVis sessions, and unfortunately missed a panel I had been planning to see. The papers were a bit more mixed, but there were agains some really good ones. Read more…
VIS 2014 – Wednesday
Wednesday is more than the halfway point of the conference, and was clearly the high point so far. There were some great papers, the arts program, and I got to see the Bertin exhibit. Read more…
VIS 2014 – Tuesday
The big opening day of the conference, Tuesday, brought us a keynote, talks, and panels. Also, a new trend I really like: many talks end with the URL of a webpage that contains a brief summary of the paper, the PDF, and often even a link to the source code of the tool they developed. Read more…
VIS 2014 – Monday
IEEE VIS 2014 technically began on Saturday, with the first full day open to all attendees being Sunday. Monday continued the workshops and tutorials, and that is where we join our intrepid reporter. Read more…
The VIS Sports Authority
When you think of a conference, does sitting around a lot come to mind? Lots of food? Bad coffee? No time to work out? For the first time in VIS history, there will be a way to exercise your body, not just your mind. The VIS Sports Authority, which is totally an official thing that I didn’t just make up, will kick your ass at VIS 2014. Read more…
Large Multiples
Getting a sense of scale can be difficult, and the usual chart types like bars and lines don’t help. Showing scale requires a different approach, one that makes the multiplier directly visible. Read more…
Eight Years of eagereyes
What is the purpose of blogging about visualization? Is it to make fun of the bad stuff? Is it to point to pretty things? Is it to explain why things are good or bad? Is it to expand the landscape of ideas and break new ground? Or is it to discuss matters at great length that ultimately don't matter all that much? Read more…
Beyond the Knee-Jerk Reaction
There is a tendency to just reflexively make fun of certain types of charts, in particular pie charts and 3D charts. While that is often justified, there are also exceptions. Not all pie charts are bad, and not all 3D charts are terrible. But to spot those outliers, we have to suppress the knee-jerk reflex and give them a moment of thought before ripping them apart. Read more…
The Semantics of the Y Axis
The vertical axis is not just important because it embodies one of the most important visual properties, but also because it is much more semantically loaded than the horizontal. Not only does the right choice of mapping help with reading a chart, it can also be confuse people if done wrong. Read more…
My Favorite Charts
There are many charts I hate, because they're badly done, sloppy, meaningless, deceiving, ugly, or for any number of other reasons. But then there are the ones I keep coming back to because they're just so clear, well-designed, and effective Read more…
What is Data Journalism?
Is a data journalist one who unearths the data, who finds the insights in the data, who finds the right way to visually communicate the data? The answer is, of course, all three. But let's tease them apart and look at each separately. Read more…
Putting Data Into Context
Raw numbers are easy to report and analyze, but without the proper context, they can be misleading. Is the effect you're seeing real, or a simple result of the underlying, obvious distribution? Too many analyses and news stories end up reporting things we already know. Read more…
Review: Kraak, Mapping Time
Can you write an entire book about a single chart? Even if that chart is supposedly the best one ever? Menno-Jan Kraak's new book, Mapping Time: Illustrated by Minard's Map of Napoleon's Russian Campaign of 1812, discusses the historical context of Minard's work, his, life, and walks through a number of design exercises to show the same or similar data in different ways. Read more…
When Bars Point Down
It's so simple it feels entirely trivial: bars in a bar chart pointing down instead of up. But the effect can be striking. And it's not as obvious when to show downward-pointing bars as it might seem. Read more…
Data Stories Episode About Data Storytelling
How is it possible that it has taken a podcast called Data Stories 35 episodes to get to the topic of data storytelling? Alberto Cairo and I helped get the topic straightened out, and I think we even convinced Moritz that stories are not the enemy of exploration. It was a fun episode to record, and it touches on many interesting topics. Read more…
Review: Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees
Trees. They’re everywhere. And not just in the physical world, but in data visualization and knowledge representation as well. This is not a new phenomenon, it goes back thousands of years. Manuel Lima’s new book, The Book of Trees, gives an overview. Read more…
Story: A Definition
What makes a story? What does a story do? In part one of this little series, I argued that stories and worlds are not opposites, but complements. In this part, I try to explain the differences between worlds and stories, and present a definition. Read more…
Stories Are Gateways Into Worlds
Moritz Stefaner recently wrote a posting titled Worlds, not stories. He basically argues that while there is a clear role for the designer of a visualization, the result should be a world that users can explore, rather than a story that they’re told. I have a few things to say about this, and will do so in two parts. This is part one. Read more…
NewsVis.org, The Directory of News Visualizations
When I was in Portland over the holidays a few weeks ago, I noticed a visualization in the local newspaper, The Oregonian. I had never heard of that before, nor of Mark Friesen, who created it. Wondering how many visualizations I might be missing, I decided to build a website that would collect them all: newsvis.org. Read more…
The Mirrored Line Chart Is A Bad Idea
The mirrored line chart is a pet peeve of mine. It's very common close to elections when there are two parties or candidates: one's gains are at the other's expense. But it becomes even more egregious when there are two categories that have to sum up to 100% by their very definition. Read more…
Data Stories Podcast: 2013 in Review, Outlook to 2014
The Data Stories podcast starts the new year with Andy Kirk and me as guests. With the hosts, Enrico Bertini and Moritz Stefaner, we discuss the major developments of 2013 and look ahead to what 2014 has in store. Read more…
Peer Review, Part 5: The Importance of Gatekeepers
The purpose of peer review is to separate the wheat from the chaff, the good from the bad, the brilliant from the clinically insane – you get the picture. But why? Why filter and not just let anybody publish whatever they want? Read more…
Peer Review, Part 4: Good Reasons for Bad Papers
As a reviewer, you might sometimes ask yourself why people write so many bad papers. And why they bother submitting them. I certainly do. But where do they come from? Who submits bad papers? And why? It may come as a surprise, but there are good reasons to submit bad papers for review. Read more…
Peer Review, Part 3: A Taxonomy of Bad Papers
Reviewing is great when you get a good paper where you can make some suggestions to make it even better, and everybody’s happy. Bad papers are much less fun, but they are also much more common. Here are some examples I’ve seen and that I keep seeing. Read more…
Peer Review, Part 2: How It Works
Peer review is one of the central pillars of academic publishing. But how does it actually work? What is blind review, and what is it good for? This part will answer those questions, and then tell you how to be a good reviewer yourself. Read more…
Peer Review, Part 1: Quilt Plots
What is peer review? How does it work? And is it really as flawed as people claim it is? In this little series, I will talk about all that, and then end up arguing that peer review does, in fact, work - at least in visualization. But first an example where it didn’t. Read more…
The State of Information Visualization, 2014
2013 was another exciting year for visualization. Between many new developments in data storytelling, a new wave of news graphics, new visualization blogs, better automated infographics, and visuals designed to hit you hard, it is difficult to decide what was most important. Here is a look back, and some ideas about where we're going. Read more…
WTFViz, ThumbsUpViz, and HelpMeViz
I have complained, repeatedly, about the lack of good online resources for visualization; in particular, when it comes to discussion and critical reflection. Also, where can you go to get help with a visualization project? A few recent websites are tackling these issues in different ways. Read more…