Report

I gratefully acknowledge that I live and work, and play on the unceded, traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples - sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) nations.

In this MultiMedia Book Report, I share a little of what I’ve learned about "Data Visualization" and include my favourite online open source tools and examples.

Introduction

1- What is Data Visualization?
2- Brief History of Data Visualization
3- Tiki-toki Visual Timeline
4- Interactive Data Visualization Examples
a-The Global Flow of People -Animated Graph
b- worldshapin- Interactive Changeable Graph
c-NYC Street Trees - Interactive Infographic
d- Hollywood Insider -Interactive Graph
5- Introduction of Tableau
6- Demonstration of Tableau with data
7- Infographic Demonstration

Instead of choosing one definition, I will use a visualization tool, the "Word Clouds Generator" tool, designed by Jason Davies. This open source data visualization tooI is used on websites and blogs to depict keyword or tag usage. The tool can also be used to compare two different bodies of text.

First, I gathered ten definitions of “data visualization” from various online sources. Then I copied all ten definitions and pasted them into the text body box of "Word Clouds Generator." Words appear in a given body of text, by making the size of each word proportional to its frequency.

As the demonstration video on the next page illustrates, the bigger words are those used more frequently. I then minimized the numbers of words using the Word Clouds Generator, reduced the words from 250 to 20 to see the words that appear in all definitions. The most frequent words were: "visualization," "data," "representation," "images," "system," "communication," and "graphic."

The words used most frequently were used to build my own definition:

"Data visualization is the presentation of data in picture or graphic which maps information visually in the system."

The applied art of data visualization has been around for a very long time.
In the 18th century, William Playfair invented the forms we use so frequently today. He created the line chart, bar chart, pie chart, and circle chart.

William Playfair and The Psychology of Graphs.pdf

During the 19th century, one of the best examples of data visualization is John Snow’s chart mapping an 1854 cholera outbreak.

John Snow's map of cholera outbreaks from nineteenth century London changed how we see disease, and is considered as one of the most inspirational examples of data journalism. In the 1850s, cholera was believed to be spread by miasma in the air and the sudden and serious outbreak of cholera in London's Soho was a mystery.
His map essentially represented each death as a bar which you can see in the video on the right. It became apparent that the cases were clustered around the pump on Broad street, which was polluted by sewage from a nearby cesspit.

In 1812, Charles Joseph Minard mapped Napoleon's march to Russia, representing the journey on a graph with different features such as temperature and number of soldiers remaining in each place.

York University professor, Michael Friendly gives an insightful lecture on the history of Data Visualization

In the past, people displayed information on paper using graphs, tables, diagrams, maps, infographics, and panels.

Everything started to change during the industrial revolution and people began using stats for commercial reasons. Later on, computers entered the picture, and we could finally access tons of information quickly. Also, computers had the power to process large datasets and create statistics based on data.

Data started to be visualized by systems and tools with the evolution of multimedia resources and the unlimited possibilities of the Internet, the visualization of data became more dynamic, with animations, interactive graphics, and variable scale maps.

One of my favourite data visualizations is called "The Temple of Time", a three-dimensional projection of historical chronography created in 1846 by Emma Willard.

In the temple, the vertical columns represent centuries, with those on the right showing names of important figures from the Old World while those on the left show figures from the New World. The floor illustrates a historical stream chart. The ceiling functions as a chart of biography. The temple was designed as a mnemonic device that allowed people to memorize information by imagining it as architectural details in a three-dimensional mental space.

Tiki-Toki is an online visualization tool. You can make a visual timeline with your dataset. Tiki-Toki timelines are not only designed to inform viewers but also to be captivating multimedia and interactive timeline experiences. In addition to text, you can include images, videos and audio in a timeline. It also allows you to display timelines in three dimensions.

Before I signed up for Tiki-Toki, I gathered some data - like text, images, descriptions related to the history of data visualization. Then I created an account. It is online so there is no need to install program.

To create a new timeline, there are three main things to you do:
EDIT OR CREATE A NEW STORY: Allows you to edit stories by clicking on story titles in a list.
Everything from a timeline's colour and date range to its image and introductory text can be changed in the Settings tab.
CATEGORIES: Allow you to colour code your stories.
SPANS allow you to split timelines into sections with their own background image and colour.

In the video to the right, I have entered data to be previewed. As an administrator, I can create a new entry with the title, year, a description, an uploaded image or video and link to any sources. On the bottom, you can slide the timeline bar by the years. When you click on an image, it enlarges the picture and you can read the description.

Here is the link to timeline I created online:
https://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/1538114/History-of-Data-Visualization/