{"id":655494,"date":"2013-05-01T12:10:06","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T16:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=641094"},"modified":"2013-05-01T12:10:06","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T16:10:06","slug":"four-ways-data-scientists-are-using-digital-art-to-humanize-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/655494","title":{"rendered":"Four ways data scientists are using digital art to humanize data"},"content":{"rendered":"

The growing pains of big data were apparent at the Data 2.0 Summit <\/a>on Tuesday in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

During one panel, the assertion that data science is dead was indeed debated. Along with the habitual tension between end user requirements for businesses and consumers and the \u201celitist\u201d ideas of data scientists and engineers, other themes explored included increasing accessibility to data, as well as changing behaviors and encouraging better decision-making with data. Everyone from sales and marketing people to fitness enthusiasts, it turns out, can be motivated by pretty pictures.<\/p>\n

As IBM\u2019s Alah Keahey put it during a panel, \u201cthere is a hunger for friendly data,\u201d and visualization can help to humanize those threatening terabytes. Here are a selection of new, and new-to-us, visualization tools that came up at the meeting.<\/p>\n

Bringing climate change home: Databasin.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A mapping and analytics platform from the Conservation Biology Institute that has 10,000 datasets on everything you need to understand how extreme weather will impact natural resources, renewable energy, and endangered species. Here is one projection<\/a> of maximum temperatures in 2080.<\/p>\n

\"world-map-climate-change-databasin\"<\/p>\n

Sparkvis<\/a> by Chloe Fan<\/strong><\/p>\n

This app is for the quantified self junkie who loves to interpret their burned calories as abstract art. The research behind the colorful display of Fitbit (see disclosure) data is explained here<\/a>. Image via QuantifiedSelf.com<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

\"sparkvis-fitbit-visualization\"<\/p>\n

Disqus Gravity<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The commenting platform\u2019s diverse content is brought together in an interactive and live visualization. Pulling from about 500 sites that use Disqus, Gravity brings together the \u201csmall\u201d data of individual comments within the context of 11 content categories. Another visualization, Orbital<\/a>, shows realtime comments geolocated on a spinning globe.<\/p>\n

\"disqus-gravity-visualization\"<\/p>\n

IBM Many Eyes<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Originally conceived by visualization guru Martin Wattenberg and colleagues in 2007, Many Eyes lets you plug in any dataset and generate nifty figures. Here, for example, is the distribution of U.S. foreign aid<\/a> over a 60-year period.<\/p>\n

\"many-eyes-visualization-foreign-aid\"<\/p>\n

Disclosure: Fitbit is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of GigaOM. Om Malik, founder of GigaOM, is also a venture partner at True.<\/em><\/p>\n

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