Category Archives: Visualization

Using Word Clouds for Topic Modeling Results

A year ago, I painstakingly formatted the topic modeling results from MALLET so that I could paste them, one by one, into Wordle. I was happy with the results, if not the workflow: First, an aside. There are folks who … Continue reading

Posted in Algorithmic Literacy, D3, Text Analysis, Visualization | 6 Comments

The Thermal Conductivity of Tungsten is an Argument

We all have our favorite pieces of information visualization, and many have been presented by Edward Tufte, but I prefer this more than any other, and more for the content than the representation. For those unfamiliar with Tufte’s The Visual … Continue reading

Posted in Algorithmic Literacy, Amusing Historical Map Features, Visualization | Comments Off

My Information… Not Quite That Beautiful

The Information is Beautiful Awards has released their shortlist. Though none of my own entries made it onto the short list, it is not surprising given the quality of work they were up against.

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Pragmatism, Practicality, and the Anti-Sublime

Imagine an interactive JavaScript globe. It could take many forms. This one is built in D3, based off Mike Bostock’s excellent example and, like most interesting JavaScript visualization, runs smoothly in Chrome and Safari and poorly in Firefox (I haven’t … Continue reading

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Some of My Information is Beautiful!

I submitted six pieces to the Information is Beautiful Awards, which is a contest for data visualization and information graphics. Of those six, I’m proud to be able to say that three of my pieces are in just-announced Long List … Continue reading

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A Map to Nowhere

The mayor of Salt Lake City recently took issue with his city being described as significantly smaller and less connected than London. There are many ways to gauge importance from a social and cultural sense, such as calculating the centrality … Continue reading

Posted in Amusing Historical Map Features, Natural Law, Spatial Humanities, Visualization | 2 Comments

An Unsatisfying Intro to D3.js

Last week I had the opportunity to give a short introduction to the JavaScript information visualization library D3. The intro, which took place at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) here at Stanford, was directed at an extremely … Continue reading

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CC-BY for Icons?!?!

I just submitted a few nouns to the Noun Project, which is the right thing to do considering I’m using a few of their nouns in a new project. When you submit your icons to NP, you have two options: … Continue reading

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My Definition of Topic Modeling

Understanding topic modeling is, to borrow a phrase from George W. Bush, “the war that never ends”. And as I was re-reading the excellent posts by Matt Jockers, Scott Weingart and Ted Underwood, I realized that I may never have … Continue reading

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Dynamic Distance Cartogram in D3

One of the features of ORBIS that I’ll be demonstrating next Wednesday is this dynamic distance cartogram, which is on Github as a gist and can be seen using bl.ocks here. It’s been written in D3 and uses a few … Continue reading

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