Summer Sports
It’s one of those things we absolutely love about the summer: sports!
We’ve been following the NBA finals and are heading to a baseball game tonight.
But there’s just one thing about sports that we’ve never been able to wrap our heads around: all of the statistics. Ever since the baseball cards we collected as kids with those rows and columns of numbers we’ve never been able to see the impressive statistic or indicator of greatness.
Now we know why: it wasn’t that the statistics weren’t impressive, it’s that they were too difficult to understand!
That’s why we went around the internet and gathered some of our favorite sports visualizations to gain new insight into the players we love!
What Makes A Data Visualization Memorable?
At VisualCue we like being at the forefront of data visualization thinking and research. This corporate culture we’ve created makes sense when you consider that VisualCue is, at it’s heart, a data visualization platform built almost entirely on new ways to look at data. It makes sense, then, that such a company would be keenly interested in any new research on what kinds of data visualizations are the most effective.
Imagine our delight, then, when new research presented just last year at the Eurographics Conference on Visualization published a paper from research at the University of Arizona and Indiana University on what kinds of data visualization led to an increase in recall accuracy.
The findings of that research, which we summarize here, should be interesting to anybody who wants to make sure that they are using the right data visualization techniques to make the most out of their data.
Data Visualization Maps
When you think about it, data visualization has been around for a long, long time. While we didn’t get things like bar graphs and pie charts until the 18th century (for better or for worse) when you think about it some of the smartest people on the planet have been trying to visualize information in ways that make things easier to understand for centuries.
Early maps of the stars and astronomical charts and constellations? Those can definitely be counted as data visualization- people looked up into the sky, saw patterns, and then copied those patterns down on paper for others to follow.
Or consider the age of exploration- what was one of the first things the explorers who started sailing around the world discovering new continents did? They made maps of their travels for others to follow: data visualization at its finest.
If you take the broad view of data visualization then maps and the patterns we found within them must certainly be some of our earliest, and most visually impressive, attempts to present information in a way that anyone can understand.
The Data of Nature
Maybe it’s just the impending summer months or the fact that spring is on it’s way out, but around the VisualCue offices we’ve been itching to get outside.
And, of course, pretty much anything that we think about around the offices gets correlated, somehow, to data visualization and the information surrounding that topic. What else did you expect? We’re data enthusiasts.
This Friday we’d like to share some of the most amazing visualizations dealing with nature and the outdoors that we’ve found from around the internet in celebration of outdoor summer fun!
Visual Data Exploration
In the most recent issue of the Harvard Business Review we saw an article that we just had to read: Visualizations That Really Work.
Being pretty obsessed with all things data visualization everyone in the office read the article and we were immediately impressed with everything that we read, but we also had a few questions and insights of our own that we could share.
We have been at this data visualization game for pretty much one reason: we realized a long time ago that using data to make smarter decisions and improve your business was going to be a key competitive advantage in the future. It’s just nice to have some third-party confirmation that we were right all along.
The data... of you
We’ve written a lot about the amazing human visual system, and what a shame it is that we don’t use it more often in data visualizations.
But frankly that is just one small (albeit awe-inspiring) part of the amazing, interconnected system that is your body.
When you think about it, your body is the ultimate source of streaming data. It is constantly providing you with feedback: it tells you when it’s hungry, thirsty, tired, cold, hot or doing just fine. This data is streaming from dozens of different sources and is processed and analyzed by the best data analytics processor in the business: your own mind.
Today we’re looking at different, innovative ways that clever people out there have come up with to visualize the data that’s coming from your own body… probably right now.
Can you eat big data?
It all started with an article we found about robot shepherds on large Australian cattle farms.
As with any new implementation of technology, the cattle farmers had a problem. According to the article, on a particularly large cattle farm the cows were too spread out for the ranchers to adequately monitor them and they were losing many animals to injury and illness as a result.
The robot shepherds used advance thermal imaging and other methods “to detect changes in body temperature and walking gait” in an effort “to improve the quality of animal health and make it easier for farmers to maintain large landscapes where animals roam free” according to the robot’s designer.
That got us thinking: what kind of data does a cow generate?
People on the move
At VisualCue we have a couple of specialities: industries that we have worked with time and again and have consistent success in implementing amazing data visualization solutions for them. Sales, marketing, operations and contact centers are just a few.
But one of the industries that often yields the most amazing visualizations and consistently sees the highest return on their investment into a data visualization platform is logistics: the business of moving people and material from one place to another. We have implemented data visualization solutions in dozens of logistics companies around the world.
So believe us when we say that whenever someone moves, whether it’s themselves or a physical asset, there is a lot of data generated. And where there’s data, there’s cool visualizations.
Asking Smart Questions
It’s one of those clichés everyone knows: you ask someone wise for answers and they respond with “you should first learn to ask the right questions.”
This might cryptic and confusing but, believe it or not, there is wisdom in learning to ask the right questions: asking the right questions can lead to the right answers. But if you don’t have the right questions then you could be spinning your wheels endlessly searching for the answers to questions that might not even lead to the most benefit.
The real world in real time
There is something undeniably amazing about seeing data stream at you in real time. Something about seeing the numbers change really hits home the fact that data is not just an abstract concept but a numerical reflection of real things happening in real time.
So why is it that sometimes we forget that data reflects reality? because numbers in a spreadsheet are so abstracted: so far removed from the data they represent that it’s easy for us to disconnect them in our minds. Real-time streams help bridge that gap, but not entirely.
That’s why this week we are focusing on data visualizations that not only are updated in near real time, but also directly represent the thing they are measuring. It’s the best way to realize that streaming data is like seeing the world as it happens.