From CS 795 Spring 2013

CS795-S13: Systems and Toolkits Notes

There's a nice overview of systems and toolkits at http://selection.datavisualization.ch/

Class examples - http://weiglevm.cs.odu.edu/~mweigle/cs795s13/

• bar charts - Excel, R, Processing, Protovis, D3, jQuery Sparklines
• Protovis stacked bar chart
• R time series

Graphing Tools

Excel

• most common graphing tool
• defaults are often bad
  • if you use Excel and plan to show it to others, do not just accept the defaults
• but, it can be made to produce nice graphs
  • http://chandoo.org/wp (see http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/09/03/6-charts-to-never-use/)
  • http://peltiertech.com
  • http://labs.juiceanalytics.com/chartchooser.html (see http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/recreating-ny-times-cancer-graph/)

R

• http://www.r-project.org
• free, well-known, well-loved, powerful
• if you don’t already have it, get it
• tutorials:
  • Martin Klein’s (ODU) Intro to R - http://www.cs.odu.edu/~mweigle/cs795/mklein-IntroR/lecture
  • Steven Buechler’s (Notre Dame) R Course Notes - http://www.nd.edu/~steve/Rcourse/Rnotes.html

Others

• MATLAB
  • also well-known and well-loved, but not free
• Gnuplot - http://www.gnuplot.info
  • I used this extensively in grad school
• Flot - http://code.google.com/p/flot
  • JavaScript library
• NumPy, SciPy - http://numpy.scipy.org
  • Python libraries

Visualization Systems

Tableau

• http://www.tableausoftware.com
• the heavy-hitter, very powerful
• started as Polaris (research project at Stanford)
• PC-only (but Mac version is rumored)
• we have an academic license this semester
• free version (Tableau Public), requires that you upload your data, which becomes public

Google Fusion Tables

• visualize and publish data as maps, timelines, and charts
• host data tables online
• combine data from multiple sources
• need a Google account for use - see http://www.google.com/drive/start/apps.html#fusiontables
• documentation - http://support.google.com/fusiontables

Google Public Data Explorer

• http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory
• visualize and explore large public-interest datasets
• upload your own data
• incorporates Gapminder's animated bubble charts
• documentation - http://support.google.com/publicdata

Many Eyes

• http://www-958.ibm.com/
• InfoVis on the web
• added social component - can comment on any vis
• upload data sets
  • become public
  • anyone can create vis from the data
• includes several preloaded vis types

Visualization Toolkits

D3.js (Data Driven Documents)

• http://d3js.org
• JavaScript, web-based toolkit
• current state-of-the-art, follow-up to Protovis
• uses SVG, CSS, HTML, JavaScript
• developed by Mike Bostock, who has lots of examples at http://bost.ocks.org/mike/

Protovis

• http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis
• JavaScript, web-based toolkit following a declarative model
  • simple grammar of graphical primitives called marks
  • marks are associated with data, using mapping to physical properties
  • properties can be dynamic or static
  • register event handlers to provide interactivity
• Tour Through the Visualization Zoo (assigned reading) has examples in Protovis
• no longer under active development (replaced by D3)

Processing/Processing.js

• http://processing.org, http://processingjs.org
• Processing is stand-alone, Processing.js is JavaScript port for web-based visualizations
• not specifically designed for InfoVis
  • data reader, layout algorithms
  • but can definitely be used to build visualizations (see http://www.tacc.utexas.edu/tacc-projects/a-thousand-words)
• well-documented, lots of tutorials
• Visualizing Data has examples in Processing, but these can be mapped to Processing.js

Google Chart Tools

• http://developers.google.com/chart/
• gallery of contributed code segments
• visualizations are interactive
• evolving API

JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit

• http://philogb.github.com/jit/
• interactive data visualization for the web

Sencha Ext JS

• http://www.sencha.com/products/extjs
• developed by same company that developed JavaScript InfoVis Toolkit
• commercial product, but has a free license

Specialized Tools

Networks

NodeXL - http://nodexl.codeplex.com/

• free template for MS Excel
• for exploring network graphs
• can directly import Twitter, Facebook, YouTube networks

Sparklines

jQuery Sparklines - http://omnipotent.net/jquery.sparkline/

• sparkline is an inline graph
• can display timelines and more (bar charts, boxplots)
• can use data supplied either inline in the HTML or via JavaScript
• examples take just 1 line of HTML and 1 line of JavaScript
• version 2.0 has interactivity (mouseover tooltips, click interaction)

Time Series

Cubism.js - http://square.github.com/cubism

• D3 plugin for visualizing time series
• dynamic, can pull data from web

SIMILE Timeline- http://simile-widgets.org/timeline/

• JavaScript library
• spin-off of MIT project

SIMILE Timeplot - http://simile-widgets.org/timeplot/

• JavaScript library
• spin-off of MIT project
• plot time series data and overlay time-based events over them

Maps

ModestMaps - http://modestmaps.com/

• free library for interactive maps
• many implementations (JavaScript, Python, Actionscript, Processing, PHP)

PolyMaps - http://polymaps.org/

• JavaScript library for making dynamic, interactive maps
• uses SVG
• can create your own tiles