Juice Analytics

Do you have your child’s drawing on the wall of your cube, office or maybe at home on the fridge? Can you remember visualizing the world that simply?  When was the last time you looked at anything quite that way? What if you did?

Well, we did just that. And, our effort resulted in a video to share with people about what we do here at Juice.  We hope you like it.

(P.S. Thank your kid for the artwork covering that stain on your wall — and for the great analogy.)

There’s a crispness in the air, the leaves are turning, and a restlessness has surfaced that is unmistakable.  Road trip!

November 1 & 2, Juice is going to be in Boston.  So, if you’ll be in town and you’d like to meet up, reach out and let us know.  Or if you happen to know someone in the Boston area who is into data visualization — or should be — take this opportunity to reach out to them.  Just “Say Hello to Someone From Massachusetts” and invite them to ping us.

There’s a lot to catch up on from industry news to the latest here at Juice, and we look forward to hearing about what’s going on in your corner of the data viz world.

If you’ll be in the Boston area and would like to connect with us, leave us a comment or send an email to info@juiceanalytics.com.

“Cheers!”

If you’ve ever tried to get anywhere in Atlanta at 5:30 p.m. on a Thursday, you’re painfully aware of the seemingly perpetual problem we have with traffic.  Last year, Atlanta was ranked as the 4th worst city for commuters.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta Map:

That’s why Juice teamed up with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution(AJC) to help metro Atlantans better understand and visualize the magnitude of the initiative which encompasses projects across a 10-county region at a proposed cost of $6.14 billion. If voters approve the new transportation referendum in Summer 2012, it will be the biggest single transportation effort in the region in over 40 years. The referendum would add an extra one percent multi-county regional sales tax to fund the mammoth initiative over a 10-year period.

Juice designed a detailed map to accompany the AJC’s three-page cover story in order to help metro Atlantans better understand and visualize the magnitude of the initiative. The map provides readers with a bird’s eye view of the 118 proposed projects on the current draft of the referendum. The alpha-numeric coordinates along the “x” and “y” axis help readers find their bearings, while the color and pattern-coded keys help them easily identify degrees of traffic congestion and decipher roadway projects from transit projects, bike and pedestrian projects from aviation projects.

We are thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to our community to do what we can to help solve one of the region’s key challenges when it comes to growth, economy, and environment. We’re looking forward to seeing how this story plays out and are hopeful that visualizations such as this one will help voters and decision makers alike consume, process the massive amounts of data driving this effort, and act.

Unfortunately, the AJC only ran the map and accompanying story in the subscriber edition of the paper, so I’m not able to share a link.

Late nights, knashing of teeth, last minute revisions, and all of that pressure.  And that was just us preparing to launch the contest.

To all of you who submitted entries for the Strata Vizathlon Visualization Contest, we thank each and every one of you, and appreciate your tremendous efforts.

Along with the team at O’Reilly Media, we are proud to announce the winners of the 2011 Strata Vizathlon Contest.

Best in Show:

Eating Constraints by Dane Summers (submitted in “Dig In” Category)

Category Winner: Delicious Storylines

Do You Want to Eat This by Team Data Distillery (Anita Lillie, Kris Chan and Romy Misra)

Category Winners: Dig In

Interactive Food Analysis by Josh Tapley

Food Facts Exploration by Kyle Foreman

The “Best in Show” winner, Dane Summers, will be announced at the O’Reilly Strata NY Summit in New York, NY September 20 or 21, 2011.

Congratulations again to our winners, and thank you to everyone who participated. You can see all the entries at the Strata Vizathlon website.

P.S. Tickets are still available for the O’Reilly Strata NY Conference. You can receive a 30% discount if you register using the discount code “JUICE” on the registration page. (Note: The discount has increased to 30% since the original blog post.)

Telling stories with data. It is an increasingly common business intelligence refrain–and it may well be part of your job description. If it is, why not tap into the time-tested lessons of those who tell stories with words?  Just as words are the basic unit of written stories, visualization techniques (charts, visualizations, colors, font sizes, sparklines, etc.) are the tools we have when telling data stories. No matter the form, authors will agonize about choosing the right units of expression, finding a balance between being concise and being comprehensive, simplicity and sophistication.

On questions of vocabulary and style in written communication, there seems to be agreement about the pursuit of simplicity and ensuring that  the message, not the words, take center stage. Below are three common writing guidelines, and what they mean for your data communication choices.

1. Smaller, simpler words

“The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.” — George Eliot

“Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” — C.S. Lewis

My experience is that the simplest visualization  techniques (bar, line, table, single number, even pie) are effective for 80% of data communication. Like simple words, you can be assured that your audience will quickly understand what you mean. Refrain from advanced visualizations like treemaps and animated bubble charts but for the special situations where the breadth and nuance of your data requires more visual sophistication.

Nevertheless, there is value in knowing what can be done in data visualization. Exposing yourself to advanced visualization techniques (start here: Infosthetic, Flowing Data, New York Times visualizations) offers similar benefits to having a large vocabulary.

2. Too many words is a symptom of poor understanding

“If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well.” — Albert Einstein

“A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.” — Samuel Johnson

Most people don’t really want to hear you think out loud. In data presentation, it’s tempting to think out loud by showing all the data in every conceivable way.  We’ve all been a recipient of that awful 80-page PowerPoint report with seemly infinite variations on the same data.

Form an opinion. Lay it out there. Don’t wander around – or worse, allow your audience to wander too much off the path. Here’s a favorite example from the New York Times. This analytical tool knows exactly what it wants to accomplish and gets to the point immediately.

3. Words are for communication, not show

“Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium.” — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.” — H.W. Fowler

It’s not about the data or the visualization; it’s about the message you are trying to communicate.  This is not simply a question of efficient communication; it is also a question of perception. When you use unnecessarily complex visualizations, you draw attention to the wrong things. Here’s a good example of a chart that is more about the chart than the data:

Contest Ends at Midnight EDT September 4, 2011.

You’re officially out of excuses.  With Hurricane Irene knocking out power and Internet connections all along the East Coast this weekend, we have decided to give you another week to submit your entry for the Strata Vizathlon Visualization Contest.  The new deadline is Sunday, September 4, 2011 at 11:59:59 p.m.

You Could Win a Trip to NYC.

The data visualization contest leads up to O’Reilly’s Strata New York Summit September 19 – 23.  The Overall “Best in Show” winner will receive round-trip air transportation,  hotel accommodations and a complimentary pass to the Strata NY Summit and Strata Conference in NYC, and will be announced as the “Best in Show” winner at the Strata Summit September 20 or 21, 2011.  See complete Rules and prize information.

Two Categories.  You Choose Which One to Enter.

There are two challenges: 1) Delicious Storylines and 2) Dig In. Enter one or enter both.  But enter.  There’s still time.

Good luck!

Happy Monday! Have you been thinking about your entry in the O’Reilly Strata Data Visualization Contest that we’re running?

If you’re looking for a more complex visualization example that’s more infographic-y than the ones we’ve been covering over the past few days, take a look at this very well done example done for GE by Fathom and Ben Fry entitled “Powering the Kitchen”.

Fathom has taken a story-like approach with this one by laying it with each tab/page a different interactive view into the data. We like it because it allows the user to explore and investigate the same data from several different, but controlled perspectives. It’s all topped off with nice use of color and contrast to make sure the viewer is looking at the most important fact on the page.

Keep working and don’t forget that all visualizations are due on Sunday 8/28 before midnight, Eastern time.

Yesterday we kicked off our O’Reilly Strata Visualization Contest and today we thought it might help to get the creative juices flowing to talk about a visualization that didn’t take complex or expensive tools to create some really interesting results.

For those of you who have been following Juice for a while, you know that we’re huge fans of the work that the New York Times Visualization Lab does. Rarely do they address a topic that we don’t think significantly improves our understanding of a topic.

Well, a couple of years ago, we were compelled to attempt to replicate a particularly interesting NYT visualization called the OECD Business Cycle Clock… using Excel.

“That’s crazy!” you say. “Couldn’t be done” you say. Well, for all you doubters out there, take a look at this blog post.

So, when you’re trying to figure out how to create that amazing viz that will win you a trip to New York City and admission to the Strata conference, keep in mind that you don’t have to be a wizard at developing with Flex, Protoviz, or D3 to create some really nice looking results. You might just need to start with Excel. There are plenty of Excel samples on our site, and you can check out Jorge Camoes’ site as well for more great examples.

Good luck!!

(As a footnote, I have to point out that it’s our opinion that the hard part of this visualization is not dependent on the technology used to implement, but rather the design thought required to lay out the solution to begin with – kudos to the NYT design team for that inspiration! Remember to start with the end in mind and you’re sure to create something much more about the results and less about the tech.)

We’re teaming up with O’Reilly Media to challenge you to participate in a data visualization contest leading up to O’Reilly’s Strata New York Summit September 19 – 23.

Data has become nearly as essential as food in both our personal and professional lives. So, why not use food as the basis for a data visualization contest?

Play With Your Food.

Join in the competition and visualize information about all the delicious fare our society enjoys. (First, you’ll want to put down that chicken wing, lest you get sauce on your keypad.) Being the foodie you are, you’ll appreciate that we’ve found some pretty cool data sets from FoodFacts.com for you to play with, making this subject matter you can really, uh, sink your teeth into.

A Trip to NYC, Strata Conference Passes and More.

The grand prize winner will win a trip to the Big Apple to present their winning visualization at the O’Reilly Strata NY Summit in New York, NY September 20 – 21, 2011.  Other prizes include Strata NY Conference passes, ebooks from oreilly.com and more. Sweet.

On-the-Map Judges.

Who would pass up an opportunity to get the attention of these judges, let alone have their work reviewed by Flowing Data’s Nathan Yau, The New York Time’s Amanda Cox and Juice’s own Chris Gemignani?  Serious bragging rights.

All That.

More information about the challenge categories, the rules, the prizes, the judges, judging criteria and all you could possibly want or need know about the contest is here.

So, get started on your data visualization now, while your appetite is whet for competition. Entries are due by August 28, 2011.

Juice Fans Get 30% Off Strata NY.

Register now to attend the O’Reilly Strata NY Conference, and get 30% off your registration fee with the special Juice fan discount.  Just enter “JUICE” on the conference registration page.  Learn more.