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Visualizing Data View Larger Image | Ben Fry
O'Reilly Media, Paperback, Published December 2007, 300 pages, ISBN 0596514557 | List Price: $39.99
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Enormous quantities of data go unused or underused today, simply because people
can't visualize the quantities and relationships in it. Using a downloadable programming
environment developed by the author, Visualizing Data demonstrates methods
for representing data accurately on the Web and elsewhere, complete with user
interaction, animation, and more.
How do the 3.1 billion A, C, G and T letters of the human genome compare to those
of a chimp or a mouse? What do the paths that millions of visitors take through
a web site look like? With Visualizing Data, you learn how to answer
complex questions like these with thoroughly interactive displays. We're not talking
about cookie-cutter charts and graphs. This book teaches you how to design entire
interfaces around large, complex data sets with the help of a powerful new design
and prototyping tool called "Processing".
Used by many researchers and companies to convey specific data in a clear and
understandable manner, the Processing beta is available free. With this tool and
Visualizing Data as a guide, you'll learn basic visualization principles,
how to choose the right kind of display for your purposes, and how to provide
interactive features that will bring users to your site over and over. This book
teaches you:
- The seven stages of visualizing data -- acquire, parse, filter, mine, represent,
refine, and interact
- How all data problems begin with a question and end with a narrative construct
that provides a clear answer without extraneous details
- Several example projects with the code to make them work
- Positive and negative points of each representation discussed. The focus
is on customization so that each one best suits what you want to convey about
your data set
The book does not provide ready-made "visualizations" that can be plugged into
any data set. Instead, with chapters divided by types of data rather than types
of display, you'll learn how each visualization conveys the unique properties
of the data it represents -- why the data was collected, what's interesting
about it, and what stories it can tell. Visualizing Data teaches you
how to answer questions, not simply display information.
Table of Contents
Preface
1. The Seven Stages of Visualizing Data
Why Data Display Requires Planning
An Example
Iteration and Combination
Principles
Onward
2. Getting Started with Processing
Sketching with Processing
Exporting and Distributing Your Work
Examples and Reference
Functions
Sketching and Scripting
Ready?
3. Mapping
Drawing a Map
Locations on a Map
Data on a Map
Using Your Own Data
Next Steps
4. Time Series
Milk, Tea, and Coffee (Acquire and Parse)
Cleaning the Table (Filter and Mine)
A Simple Plot (Represent and Refine)
Labeling the Current Data Set (Refine and Interact)
Drawing Axis Labels (Refine)
Choosing a Proper Representation (Represent and Refine)
Using Rollovers to Highlight Points (Interact)
Ways to Connect Points (Refine)
Text Labels As Tabbed Panes (Interact)
Interpolation Between Data Sets (Interact)
End of the Series
5. Connections and Correlations
Changing Data Sources
Problem Statement
Preprocessing
Using the Preprocessed Data (Acquire, Parse, Filter, Mine)
Displaying the Results (Represent)
Returning to the Question (Refine)
Sophisticated Sorting: Using Salary As a Tiebreaker (Mine)
Moving to Multiple Days (Interact)
Smoothing Out the Interaction (Refine)
Deployment Considerations (Acquire, Parse, Filter)
6. Scatterplot Maps
Preprocessing
Loading the Data (Acquire and Parse)
Drawing a Scatterplot of Zip Codes (Mine and Represent)
Highlighting Points While Typing (Refine and Interact)
Show the Currently Selected Point (Refine)
Progressively Dimming and Brightening Points (Refine)
Zooming In (Interact)
Changing How Points Are Drawn When Zooming (Refine)
Deployment Issues (Acquire and Refine)
Next Steps
7. Trees, Hierarchies, and Recursion
Using Recursion to Build a Directory Tree
Using a Queue to Load Asynchronously (Interact)
An Introduction to Treemaps
Which Files Are Using the Most Space?
Viewing Folder Contents (Interact)
Improving the Treemap Display (Refine)
Flying Through Files (Interact)
Next Steps
8. Networks and Graphs
Simple Graph Demo
A More Complicated Graph
Approaching Network Problems
Advanced Graph Example
Mining Additional Information
9. Acquiring Data
Where to Find Data
Tools for Acquiring Data from the Internet
Locating Files for Use with Processing
Loading Text Data
Dealing with Files and Folders
Listing Files in a Folder
Asynchronous Image Downloads
Using openStream( ) As a Bridge to Java
Dealing with Byte Arrays
Advanced Web Techniques
Using a Database
Dealing with a Large Number of Files
10. Parsing Data
Levels of Effort
Tools for Gathering Clues
Text Is Best
Text Markup Languages
Regular Expressions (regexps)
Grammars and BNF Notation
Compressed Data
Vectors and Geometry
Binary Data Formats
Advanced Detective Work
11. Integrating Processing with Java
Programming Modes
Additional Source Files (Tabs)
The Preprocessor
API Structure
Embedding PApplet into Java Applications
Using Java Code in a Processing Sketch
Using Libraries
Building with the Source for processing.core
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Ben Fry received his doctorate from the Aesthetics + Computation Group at the
MIT Media Laboratory and was the 2006-2007 Nierenberg Chair of Design for the
Carnegie Mellon School of Design. He worked with Casey Reas to develop Processing,
which won a Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica in 2005. Ben's work has
received a New Media Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, and been shown
at the Museum of Modern Art, Ars Electronica, the 2002 Whitney Biennial and
the 2003 Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial.
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