http://forums.flowingdata.com/ Strength in Numbers en Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:38:03 +0000 http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1177 Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:57:15 +0000 adamnieman 1177@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Thank you all for your helpful comments. I think I have a lot of work to do to make it clearer what the animation is trying to communicate.</p> <p>I'm actually a bit of a purist when it comes to charts. I generally try to maximise the data/ink ratio and eschew 'chart junk'. If I were simply trying to show a comparison of per-capita emissions I would have made a simple, flat barchart showing annual values for per-capita emissions. There certainly wouldn't have been a business women for decoration (not on MY chart, though decoration has a place sometimes as Nathan pointed out on the FlowingData blog today <a href='http://bit.ly/4pJHo' rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/4pJHo</a>).</p> <p>What I was actually trying to do was combine an <em>illustration</em> of a quantity of gas with a chart. The idea was to give viewers a physical feel for the rate as well as insight into the numbers. The shape of the bars is intended to represent actual gas - the actual space it would occupy. The woman wasn't there for decoration but to give a sense of scale to the illustration of gas - the physical dimensions. To minimize 'noise' I chose a simple perspective and tried to use no more tricks than are absolutely necessary to help the viewer see it in 3 dimensions - a horizon with a sky, and shadows. None of this seems to be coming through very clearly.</p> <p>The chart is actually part of a set, but I haven't rendered the video for the others yet:</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonquilt/3953371030/" title="Still from movie - per capita carbon dioxide emissions: actual volume of gas, one day in one minute by CarbonQuilt, on Flickr" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2621/3953371030_4a6456c9c1.jpg" width="500" height="400" alt="Still from movie - per capita carbon dioxide emissions: actual volume of gas, one day in one minute" /></a></p> <p>This still from a video shows a day's emissions. Again, the woman is there for scale - the chart is supposed to illustrate the actual physical dimensions of the gas.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonquilt/3953371154/" title="Still from movie - per capita carbon dioxide emissions: actual volume of gas, one year in one minute by CarbonQuilt, on Flickr" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3451/3953371154_0d6e0bf270.jpg" width="500" height="400" alt="Still from movie - per capita carbon dioxide emissions: actual volume of gas, one year in one minute" /></a></p> <p>This still from another video shows a year's emissions. Again, the UN Building is there for scale - the chart is supposed to illustrate the actual physical dimensions of the gas. This is how much we each emit per year.</p> <p>This video shows the whole world's carbon dioxide emissions to scale in real-time (i.e. what it would look like if the world's emissions were emanating from one place):<br /> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1vbtnExw_g" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1vbtnExw_g</a></p> <p>If anyone has any tips for how I can make the intention clearer in the animations themselves I would continue to be very grateful. </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1175 Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:06:35 +0000 nils_gehlenborg 1175@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>I think it's a really neat idea to show this data in real-time. However, I can't make the connection between volume (that would be cubic meters) to the length of the bars (which are measured in meters as far as I can tell). </p> <p>Maybe you can use a familiar volume to illustrate the differences, something like (2l) soda bottles could do. In that case it might actually be more striking to show how quickly they empty, rather than fill up. </p> <p>It would also be interesting to show how huge the difference is between the countries at the lower and and countries at the upper end, after an hour, a day and a year. That's when people will be really struck. </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1174 Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:41:59 +0000 Kim Rees 1174@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Hi John,</p> <p>I think Adam was showing the actual 30 seconds of realtime. </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1173 Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:13:06 +0000 johncmunoz@gmail.com 1173@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Hi Nathan,</p> <p>I love your site. It's great to see postings like this asking for, and getting, your audience's feedback.</p> <p>I think there's a place for animation in info viz, but I'm not so sure that the data you're trying to show call for it.</p> <p>Ask yourself this question, if you just showed the last frame of the graph would your audience be as well informed as they would be by watching the entire 30 second clip? I think the answer's 'yes.'</p> <p>If you watch the master of graphical animation, Hans Rosling (and I bet you have), I don't think you could say that his watching the last frame of his movies would be as informative as watching the entire movie because his movies tend to show trends that change over time. In addition, I thin it's hard to use animation in a graph without narration. Dr. Rosling's movies don't stand on their own very well. Of course, it doesn't hurt that he's a rock star of a presenter. Anyway...</p> <p>I'm having a hard time getting my head around the story that the movie is trying to tell. What "real-time" is being referred to? A day, a year? If you're going to animate this, the time increment should be shown.</p> <p>If what we're seeing is CO2 output per day, by country, then I think you'd be fine just showing the amount, in grams (or lbs for your American audience) by country, sans animation.</p> <p>To make reading the chart easier I'd flip the axes, and put the countries on the Y and pounds on the X. This way, your readers won't need to struggle with the angling of the countries to read them. I'd also get rid of the image of the woman. The image is more distracting than it is informative. If you just show the grams or pounds most people will understand that the US is emitting, per capita, as much CO2 as a person weighs. Although the real story of the chart is not that, it's that the US, Canada and Australia are the leading emitters of CO2, by a factor or nearly 2X when compared to other 'developed' nations.</p> <p>I'd also remove the two tone shading from the background. It makes the bars on the bottom half of the chart appear different than the top half. If that's your intent, by using the shading as a reference line, then use a standard reference line and label it accordingly.<br /> Also, the mixing of weight and height on the Y axis is a valiant effort to double the information being shown on one axis, but it's more confusing than illustrative. People are expecting 1 variable per axis. If you want to stick with this visualization, I'd go with weight.</p> <p>Keep up the good work!</p> <p>John C. Munoz<br /> <a href="http://www.bzintelguru.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.bzintelguru.com</a> </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1172 Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:03:40 +0000 jpmarcum 1172@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Can you add other markers? Place the woman at the US end and an inchworm (or something far more clever than that?) at the Somalia end? </p> <p>Overall very nice but I think it could be half the runtime and not lose any impact. </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1171 Wed, 23 Sep 2009 13:04:32 +0000 adamnieman 1171@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Hi Krees,</p> <p>Thanks very much for your feedback - very vauluable, I'm already glad I asked.</p> <p>The business woman is there to provide real-world scale. Each of the cubes (which contain 1 gramme of carbon dioxide) is 8 cm high. It appears that isn't obvious. My intention is to focus on the volume, which is a much more intuitive way to think about the quantity of gases than mass (weight). </p> <p>How can I make it clearer that the woman is part of the scaling and not just chart-junk? What/who should I use in her place? </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1170 Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:47:13 +0000 Kim Rees 1170@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Hi Adam,</p> <p>I really like the idea you have. I think it might help to see real world objects of the same weight. I personally still can't relate to the y-axis. For instance, when it gets to 5g is that like the same as a grape? Or an apple?</p> <p>Also, I don't think the businesswoman adds anything to your chart.</p> <p>Thanks for posting it. It has the potential to be very powerful. </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-barchart-links-statistics-to-geometry-co2-visualisation-3#post-1168 Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:33:41 +0000 adamnieman 1168@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>I'd really appreciate comments on this graphic/movie. Does it work? How can it be improved? The idea is to give viewers a sense of scale they can relate to - a genuine <strong>feel</strong> for the numbers.</p> <p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/carbonquilt/3947538769/" title="Still from movie: per-capita emissions in real-time by CarbonQuilt, on Flickr" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2602/3947538769_ba2d4ab242.jpg" width="500" height="281" alt="Still from movie: per-capita emissions in real-time" /></a></p> <p>I don't seem to be able to embed the video in this post, but it's here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkS0-AukOBo" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkS0-AukOBo</a></p> <p>Thanks for looking,</p> <p>Adam </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/just-landed-travelers-on-twitter#post-691 Tue, 12 May 2009 17:53:28 +0000 nathany 691@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Pretty darn cool. The grabbed data from the Twitter Search API for tweets that included "just landed in..." and then took the previous location has the Twitter user's entered profile location. Mapped it out for animated travels. Simple idea. Interesting results.</p> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/4587178?pg=embed&#38;sec=" rel="nofollow">http://vimeo.com/4587178?pg=embed&#38;sec=</a> </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-us-carbon-map#post-30 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:23:41 +0000 DataJunkie 30@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Yeah, the hub and spoke appearance always impresses me for some reason. :) </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-us-carbon-map#post-10 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 10:11:23 +0000 nathany 10@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>Found <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/AmericanCarbon/" rel="nofollow">this</a> on the NASA site:</p> <blockquote><p>To create the inventory, Gurney and his colleagues relied on existing data at numerous state and federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Census Bureau. Nobody specifically collected data on carbon dioxide emissions, but they each collected data that could be fed into models that would allow Gurney to estimate them.</p> <p>The EPA had data on how much carbon monoxide industries, power plants, or urban areas generate; what kinds of devices produced it, and the kind and amount of fuel they used. Knowing all these things, says Gurney, “I can figure out how much CO2 was emitted quite easily with simple combustion models.”</p> <p>In addition to pollution records, they used county records of everything from the square footage of commercial and residential buildings, to the miles of roads, to how many and what kinds of cars were registered. They gathered these records up, figured out how to tease carbon dioxide emissions from them, and mapped them on a common grid.</p></blockquote> <p>I smell a weekend project coming on... </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-us-carbon-map#post-9 Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:51:22 +0000 hadley 9@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>I wonder how they get this data. It's striking that you can see many of the interstates. </p> http://forums.flowingdata.com/topic/animated-us-carbon-map#post-2 Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:55:29 +0000 nathany 2@http://forums.flowingdata.com/ <p>This <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/carbon_200201.mov" rel="nofollow">animated map</a> from NASA shows hourly carbon data over a month. Watch the US glow...</p> <p><img src="http://projects.flowingdata.com/images/animated-carbon-map.png" /> </p>