Emerging AI Attached to Business Meetings and Process Management.

Some of the work we did in the enterprise a dozen plus years ago was to improve executive decision making based on visualized data.   Especially useful when it needed to focus complex, expensive  and difficult to obtain expertise.    And results that further need to be linked to known and developing process.  At the time we were also working with strategic AI approaches, but it had yet to mature.   It comes to mind now that methods like GPT make this easier, especially when integrated with data visualization and large data base exploration.     Exploring further .... 

Here is a set of posts:   from this blog about the work then.  

Connect to discuss ...     Franz   

Tufte Course

Edward Tufte Online Course

Edward Tufte   edwardtufte.com

Practical examples are from everywhere: science, social science, music, business and more.

More information

In the enterprise we scheduled a number of these Tufte courses,   They were very good, the books are good reference , mostly inspirational in making you want to do good visualization, rather than being very practical for how-to. Every one should have these as reference. 

Sign up for online course info.

Best of the Year Charts

Nathan put out some best of the year charts, on an expected topic.

Best Data Visualization Projects of 2020

It’s been a year. We saw a lot of charts. These are the best ones.

By Nathan Yau

I’ll be honest. I thought about skipping the picks this year. Then I felt that’s no way to finish up 2020. So, here are my favorite visualization projects in no particular order. Of course there was one topic that weighed most heavily, but there were also some other interesting works along the way. ... ' 

Sankey Diagrams for Visualization

A reader reminded me that I had posted on the Sankey Diagram, a form of 'pie' chart with room for lots of relationships.    A kind of concept diagram too.    Even link to a blog with lots of examples.  Here is a re-post of that, with lots of new examples.

Also, I had forgotten this, Sankey Diagrams are available in Google Charts.

SANKEY DIAGRAMS
A Sankey diagram says more than 1000 pie charts

(Below one example, then lots more at the link) 

SAMPLES
EU Food Flows 2011

This comprehensive and well-structured Sankey diagram on food production, waste and consumption is featured in an article  ‘Quantification of food waste per product group along the food supply chain in the European Union: a mass flow analysis by Carla Caldeira et al. (published as open access article under CC BY license in: Resources Conservation and Recycling · June 2019). The paper “presents a high-level top-down approach to food waste accounting in the European Union.” ... " 

Virtualitics June Newsletter

I see that Virtualitics has a June Newsletter out, we helped test early beta versions.  I see you can now schedule a 30 day free immersive trial.  See my past experiences and comments on it with the tag 'virtualitics' below.

JUNE NEWSLETTER  @virtualitics.com

Software updates, performance improvements, and a number of new additions to our team.

SOFTWARE UPDATE
VIRTUALITICS IMMERSIVE PLATFORM VERSION 2020.3

→ New Features:

Improved plot customizations and enhanced visualizations include a refined tick mark system, plot titles, and management of trailing zeros

A new avatar system as well as optimizations in virtual reality increase speed and improve overall functionality across the environment

User interface improvements for increased software stability and an improved collaborative experience

If you have any questions or need assistance upgrading please contact us at support@virtualitics.com
.... "

Virtualitics for Insight Extraction

A company of interest for advanced data visualization.  We worked with them in the Enterprise.

Virtualitics Selected fof the Air Force Strategic $7 Million Award
March 16, 2020 By Amy Gunzenhauser

Virtualitics is pleased to announce that it has been selected for the Air Force’s first ever Strategic Fund Increase (STRATFI) award through AF Ventures. The $7 million contract will enable Virtualitics to provide our groundbreaking AI data analytics software, Virtualitics Immersive Platform (VIP), to Air Force Global Strike Command to help airmen solve pressing data challenges in the U.S. strategic bomber fleet.

The award was announced by the Secretary of the Air Force, Barbara Barrett, and Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, Dr. Will Roper, at the Air Force’s virtual “Pitch Bowl” event.

Dr. Roper has described the winners of the STRATFI award as companies providing “game-changing” technologies to the Air Force. “The thing that we’re working on now is the big bets, the 30 to 40 big ideas, disruptive ideas that can change our mission and hopefully change the world,” Roper said. “We’re looking for those types of companies.”

Virtualitics is proud to be one of the “big bet” startups the Air Force is counting on to preserve the U.S. military’s technological advantage.

Receiving the STRATFI award at the Pitch Bowl culminates an impressive trend of recent Department of Defense contracts for Virtualitics. Virtualitics is the only commercial startup to win contract awards at the Air Force’s first ever Space Pitch Day and the F-35 Pitch Day, in addition to the STRATFI. Winning the “triple crown” of contract awards at the Air Force’s seminal innovation events is a clear indication of product-market fit for our solution in the DoD.

We are very proud of our work with the DoD. We have found great satisfaction in helping our men and women in uniform unlock actionable insights in their data...." 

Bing Launches Interactive COVID-19 Map

Instructive map, do wonder how up to date it is.

Microsoft Bing launches interactive COVID-19 map to provide pandemic news

But it’s struggling to provide relevant updates

By Jon Porter   @JonPorty    in TheVerge

Microsoft has launched a new interactive Bing map to provide information on the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The map shows the amount of cases on a per country basis, broken down by the number of currently active cases, recovered cases, and fatal cases. In the US, meanwhile, you can view information state-by-state. Selecting individual countries or states will provide links to relevant news stories and videos. Unfortunately, the stories being promoted aren’t always the most timely or useful to understand the current state of the evolving pandemic.

Microsoft says the tool is pulling data from a collection of sources including the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and Wikipedia. The tool itself doesn’t say how frequently its numbers are being updated, but at the time of publication we found the data to have been updated in the last hour.   ...  " 

Responsible Virus Charting

Click through for an interesting links to data visualization of virus data:

Responsible coronavirus charts via FlowingData

Statistical Visualization  /  coronavirus, Datawrapper

Speaking of responsible visualization, Datawrapper provides 17 charts and maps you can use in your stories, without causing unnecessary panic.

Below is an embedded example:  ...

Coronavirus COVID-19 cases worldwide

Currently infected people (confirmed cases), already recovered people and people who died due to the coronavirus, worldwide. This chart gets updated once a day with data by Johns Hopkins. ... "

Books by Stephen Few

A look at all of  Stephen Few's books on the viz and use  of data, including his latest:

The Data Loom, Stephen Few, $15.95 (U.S.), Analytics Press, May 15, 2019

Data, in and of itself, isn't valuable. It only becomes valuable when we make sense of it. Weaving data into understanding involves several distinct but complementary thinking skills. Foremost among them are critical thinking and scientific thinking. Until information professionals develop these capabilities, we will remain in the dark ages of data. If you're an information professional and have never been trained to think critically and scientifically with data, this book will set your feet on the path that will lead to an Information Age worthy of the name. ... " 

Stephen Few on Logarithms

Data viz expert Stephen Few on Logarithms.   I recall very early in my experience in the enterprise,  having to work with execs on this concept and how it could improve their understanding of visual measures, but also confuse them.  Here a considerable and interesting view.  'Sensemaking' is a good term here.

Logarithms Unmuddled  by Stephen Few

I often write about topics that I myself have struggled to understand. If I’ve struggled, I assume that many others have struggled as well. Over the years, I’ve found several mathematical concepts confusing, not because I’m mathematically disinclined or disinterested, but because my formal training in mathematics was rather limited and, in some cases, poorly taught. My formal training consisted solely of basic arithmetic in elementary school, basic algebra in middle school, basic geometry in high school, and an introductory statistics course in undergraduate school. When I was in school, I didn’t recognize the value of mathematics—at least not for my life. Later, once I became a data professional, a career that I stumbled into without much planning or preparation, I learned mathematical concepts on my own and on the run whenever the need arose. That wasn’t always easy, and it occasionally led to confusion. Like many mathematical topics, logarithms can be confusing, and they’re rarely explained in clear and accessible terms. How logarithms relate to logarithmic scales and logarithmic growth isn’t at all obvious. In this article, I’ll do my best to cut through the confusion.

Until recently, my understanding (and misunderstanding) of logarithms stemmed from limited encounters with the concept in my work. As a data professional who specialized in data visualization, my knowledge of logarithms consisted primarily of three facts:

Along logarithmic scales, each labeled value that typically appears along the scale is a consistent multiple of the previous value (e.g., multiples of 10 resulting in a scale such as 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, etc.).

Logarithmic scales make it easy to compare rates of change in line graphs because equal slopes represent equal rates of change.

Logarithmic growth exhibits a pattern that goes up by a constantly decreasing amount.
If you, like me, became involved in data sensemaking (a.k.a., data analysis, business intelligence, 
analytics, data science, so-called Big Data, etc.) with a meagre foundation in mathematics, your understanding of logarithms might be similar to mine—similarly limited and confused. For example, if you think that the sequence of values 1, 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, and so on is a sequence of logarithms, you’re mistaken, and should definitely read on.

Before reading on, however, I invite you to take a few minutes to write a definition for each of the following concepts:   ... " 

Data Visualization in Quadrants with a Story

Clever piece in KDNuggets, about how to take survey data and take some basic, well known frameworks, and add a story to make your point.  Non-technical.   Not sure how wow-viral the point is, but this gives an example of how to proceed to make simple data description useful for anyone.  Nice thoughtful piece.

The 4 Quadrants of Data Science Skills and 7 Principles for Creating a Viral Data Visualization

As a data scientist, your most important skill is creating meaningful visualizations to disseminate knowledge and impact your organization or client. These seven principals will guide you toward developing charts with clarity, as exemplified with data from a recent KDnuggets poll. 

By Jose Berengueres, Professor & Angel Investor.

I teach CS and Design Thinking. But today, I am on a mission to show how to do great charts because I dislike confusing charts. You may think of me as the Marie Kondo of charts or the Cole Knaflic of Dubai, and you might not be entirely wrong. In this post, I will share 7 principles* to go from Aha-charts to Wow-charts. Let’s get our hands dirty with a dataset from a recent KDnuggets poll.

The poll had just two questions:

Which skills/knowledge areas do you currently have? and
Which skills do you want to add or improve?
KDnuggets received 1,500 answers, and we will use the aggregates by skill [1].  ...  "   

Google on Design of Data Viz

Useful view.  Its good to set up a standard and teach that within an enterprise.   Consider also its application to mobile devices.

Six Principles for Designing Any Chart
An introduction to Google’s new data visualization guidelines   By Manuel Lima from Medium

In August 2017, a group of passionate designers, researchers, and engineers at Google came together to create a comprehensive set of data visualization guidelines — covering everything from color, shape, typography, iconography, interaction, and motion. The success of this collaboration sparked the formation of Google’s first fully dedicated Data Visualization team, which kicked off in May 2018.

Over the last year, we’ve continued to work on understanding the needs, requirements, and desires shaping how people visualize and interact with information. Now, we want to share our insights with creators everywhere. We’ve launched detailed public guidelines for creating your own data visualizations, and distilled our top principles and considerations. Below, six strategies for designing any chart.  ..... "

Virtualitics Update

Some time ago I mentioned I had taken a look at the immersive data visualization and analysis environment Virtualitics.  Have received an update of their work with demonstration videos and motivations that is worth a look:

Virtualitics Update May 2019
Discover VIP
AI-driven Analytics and Immersive Environments .... 

Visualizing Census Data

R based capabilities.    More hints in this short article at the link.   I found myself needing this in a project where it could have been useful.

Making maps to visualize census data    Posted by Mab Alam in DSC

Visualizing census data could not be easier thanks to few great packages in R. 

Not that in Python you could not do spatial analysis/visualization of census data, but certainly not as easily as in R because of some tailored rstats packages for this purpose.

Kyle Walker developed a package called tidycensus. This package allows for easy access, analysis and visualization of Census Bureau data on hundreds of variables.  ... " 

Google Shuts Down Fusion Tables

More criticism for Google ditching tests.   Here one that has been around for some time.  I recall looking at and recommending it for a trial.  Certainly promotes your cloud.  This was an impressive visualization service.   I do wonder how many of these were constructed and are being used and how many of those customers will raise their voices.

Google will shut down Fusion Tables

After more than a decade in service, Google's easy-to-use cloud visualization service is being shuttered.

Google is shutting down its Fusion Tables cloud service, a Google Drive option that offered an easy way to create online visualizations, especially maps. Google announced today that the service will end on Dec. 3, 2019, and "maps using the Fusion Tables Layer in the Maps JavaScript API v3.37 will start to see errors in August 2019."

The news highlights the risks of relying on "free" cloud services from for-profit private companies.

"Mapserver, Geoserver, PostGIS, GEOS, and all the other open source software you were using 9 years ago when Google Fusion Tables was the new hotness are still available [and] will not be shut down next year," taunted open-source advocate Paul Ramsey on Twitter ..... "

History of Data Visualization and its Future

Good, detailed and lengthy piece.  Remember many of the transitions.  Now would like to see more and better analytics/AI visualization to add to this.    And better ways to understand deeper context and application of data for use potential.

The 3 waves of data visualization: A brief history and predictions for the future  By Elijah Meeks, Senior Data Visualization engineer, Netflix

This post is based on Elijah Meeks’ keynote from the 2018 Tapestry Conference. Elijah is a Senior Data Visualization Engineer at Netflix. A version of this post originally appeared on Medium.com.

Fifteen years ago, there was no D3, no Tableau, no ggplot or even Prefuse/Flare. If you wanted to do network visualization you might use the newly published Cytoscape, though it was focused on bioinformatics—the science of collecting and analyzing complex biological data like genetic codes. Geospatial options were more advanced, with ArcGIS providing more and more cartographic functionality in its many red toolboxes.  .... "

Best Visualization Libraries

Lots new to me here, well worth a look.

Best Visualization Libraries  from KD Nuggets.

There are plenty of library options out there to make great visualizations. We outline five of the best, complete with code examples and explanations, that will enable you to create and build interactive visualizations. text   By Lio Fleishman, Sisense.

As a Front-End Engineer at Sisense, I need to build multiple components using data visualization libraries. Visualization libraries exist to help us understand complex ideas. There are plenty of library options to make visualizations on the web. Each of which has their own positives and negatives. Here are, in my opinion, five of the best visualization libraries out there now.

To begin with, I assume you already know what React is. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the short answer is that React is a JavaScript library to build user interfaces. If you want the long answer, you can check out a bit more here. React is supported by Facebook and is the most popular Javascript library to build UIs today.  .... " 

Visualized Medical Record Analysis

Liked the idea, but also probably also requires a means of augmenting the visuals to emphasize key metadata, relationship to patterns detected by meta analyses, changes over time.

Visualization: U of T Researchers Develop System for Medical Records
U of T News   By Nina Haikara

Researchers at the University of Toronto (U of T) in Canada recently discussed their development of a curation-based approach for clinical text visualization. Using information from local clinics and other resources, the Doccurate visualization tool incorporated datasets of medical chart notes for each patient, with conditions cited throughout a chart visualized as steamgraphs, string-like graphs with droplets that expand upon recurrence of terms; each condition was labeled with a different color for quick recognition. U of T's Devin Singh said Doccurate stands apart from other medical visualization tools with its capability for customization. Said Singh, "It's communicated to me in a visual way, which helps link the mental models of physicians together, creating a holistic care team through visualization." U of T's Nicole Sultanum said the next step involves delivering a visual sense of narrative and progression as to how the patient has developed over time. ..

(Click through for complete graph)

Sankey Diagrams, Generation and Code

I recently happened on a need and means to generate flow diagrams.  A useful way to portray flow in systems.  WP  includes links to generators and coding examples,  including Google Chart. Some good examples and generators

Virtualitics

 I had previously mentioned Virtualitics here.  Currently examining.  Here is a new short presentation:

Michael Amori, Virtualitics' CEO presents at Fintech Innovation Lab NYC demo day.

Fintech Innovation Lab NY Presents: Virtualitics

" ... In SiliconAngle:  Virtualitics offers a data visualization platform that combines artificial intelligence, Big Data and virtual reality to create interactive 3D data models. Virtualitics’ platform is a VR application that allows users to generate complex data models composed of up to 10 dimensions of data, all in a shared virtual office where users can collaborate and analyze the data together. Using machine learning, Virtualitics’ platform is also able to recommend optimal visualizations that gives users a better understanding of the whole picture for their data. ... "  

Online Overview and Documentation.   Continuously being updated.