Exploring Data Visualization #6 – Commons Knowledge: Insights from the Scholarly Commons

In this monthly series, I share a combination of cool data visualizations, useful tools and resources, and other visualization miscellany. The field of data visualization is full of experts who publish insights in books and on blogs, and I’ll be using this series to introduce you to a few of them. You can find previous posts by looking at the Exploring Data Visualization tag.

U.S. immigration represented by concentric rings like a tree, where outermost ring is the most recent, with colors denoting immigrants' origin primarily by continent — from National Geographic, “200 Years of U.S. Immigration Looks Like the Rings of a Tree”

1) Two Northeastern University professors visualized immigration data for National Geographic by creating a fascinating chart that looks a lot like the growth rings of a tree. They write, “Like countries, trees can be hundreds, even thousands, of years old. Cells grow slowly, and the pattern of growth influences the shape of the trunk. Just as these cells leave an informational mark in the tree, so too do incoming immigrants contribute to the country’s shape.”

two line graphs, one with a legend and one with direct line labeling, demonstrating the advantage of the latter — from StorytellingWithData, “Accessible data viz is better data viz”

2) Accessibility is important in all kinds of communication, and data visualization is no exception. But it’s not always obvious how to make visualizations more accessible. You can find several tips for improving your visualization in “Accessible data viz is better data viz.”

Polar histograms of the streets in major cities across the U.S. — by Geoff Boeing, “Comparing City Street Orientations”

3) Urban planning postdoc Geoff Boeing used open map data to create a series of polar histograms that demonstrate how the streets in various U.S. cities do or don’t follow a neat grid. It’s a great example of a visualization that looks intriguing and also packs a lot of information. Learn more about it in his blog post, Comparing City Street Orientations.

I hope you enjoyed this data visualization news! If you have any data visualization questions, please feel free to email me and set up an appointment at the Scholarly Commons.