What software do you use to create your graphics? I see the graphics on this blog and clearly they are not created in Excel. I am trying to create more professional graphics that can explain the story behind my analysis.
Thanks in advance,
Brock
FlowingData Forums » Data Visualization
Software used
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I know Nathan is a big R user for analysis. I think that's where he creates the initial graphics and then cleans them up using a program like Adobe Illustrator.
Nathan can probably expand upon this.
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Yeah, if I'm doing actual analysis stuff, I use R, but if the data are already processed and I only want a non-complicated graph (e.g. pie, bar) I'll use Adobe Illustrator for the whole thing.
This poll might be of interest:
http://flowingdata.com/2008/06/09/what-do-you-use-to-analyze-andor-visualize-data-poll-results/
All the tools have pros and cons, so I guess it's mostly about finding the tool that works best for what suits your needs :)
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Great question. I am new to this, and I find that Excel creates work for me. I'm not ready to front the cash for Illustrator, but I found an open source package called Inkscape. Does anyone have any experience with that?
I am also intrigued by Google's Chart API, but it looks a little intimidating, even for an ex-programmer.
I haven't played with R yet, but now that I see this, it is on my to-do list.
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I haven't used Inkscape before, but I'm sure it'd be useful judging from the site. You could also create the plots in R, save as a PDF, and then edit it in Inkscape.
The Google Chart API actually doesn't seem too bad. If you know how to build URLs, you can make the charts. Basically, you're just tossing in some parameters and the API spits out a graph.
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Actually, R has an SVG graphics device that does a great job, see http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/RSvgDevice/index.html.
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I use R and Inkscape. Same work flow than Nathan suggest (pdf). From Inkscape, you can save it as a pdf or svg (default format) or many other formats. For what I want to do, I've tried Illustrator, but it is too complex. It is like taking a bazooka to shoot a fly. You can do many things with Inkscape and it is fast to learn.
R : http://www.r-project.org/
Inkscape : http://www.inkscape.org/ -
Along these lines, do any of you have recommendations on the best way to learn R? Specifically, I'm comfortable with programming (especially the OO paradigm) but don't know statistics very well. I've written infovis apps in prefuse, but not much with data graphics. I started reading Verzani's "Using R for Introductory Statistics" and found it uninspiring.
Anyone have a favorite book, website, or tutorial for someone in my shoes?
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Maybe you're looking for "R Graphics" by Murrell. It's more focused on the graphic side of things and less on the analysis (which R is sorta primarily used for) that you probably found in Verzani's book.
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I'll put in a shameless plug for my graphics package for R: ggplot2, http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/. You'll also find a (currently free) copy of the ggplot2 book at http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/book.
For general data manipulation, I'd recommend Phil Spector's book "Data manipulation with R", but I'm not sure of a good general introduction to stats with R for someone who is comfortable programming.
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I used the freeware ViSta for visual bivariate and multivariate analysis (with small data sets).
Here you can get an idea of the plots you can produce:
http://www.uv.es/prodat/ViSta/ and
http://www.uv.es/visualstats/Book/Figures.htmThe authors wrote a manual the which is expensive but excellent:
Forrest W. Young, Pedro M. Valero-Mora and Michael Friendly.
Visual Statistics. Seeing Data with Dynamic Interactive Graphics.
Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics (2006)They say
Visual Statistics brings the most complex and advanced statistical methods within reach of those with little statistical training by using animated graphics of the data. Using ViSta: The Visual Statistics System-developed by Forrest Young and Pedro Valero-Mora and available free of charge on the Internet-students can easily create fully interactive visualizations from relevant mathematical statistics, promoting perceptual and cognitive understanding of the data's story. An emphasis is placed on a paradigm for understanding data that is visual, intuitive, geometric, and active, rather than one that relies on convoluted logic, heavy mathematics, systems of algebraic equations, or passive acceptance of results.You get the current version here:
http://www.uv.es/visualstats/Book/DownloadBook.htm -
frets:
Google Charts isn't compelling from a visualization perspective. The output is limited in resolution and it's difficult to tweak the results (and because the output is a bitmap, it's not terribly convenient for importing into something like Illustrator to hand-tweak).
The big draw of Google Charts is that it's easy to automate. So, I've used it for places where I needed to auto-generate and auto-update graphics (for example, website statistics); I would probably never use it in a place where I wanted to do a one-off by hand.
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I use Processing, and sometimes R or Matlab for static images (with refinement in Adobe Illustrator).
Does anyone have any impressions of using the Flare or Prefuse visualization libraries? http://flare.prefuse.org (I'm curious to see if I can make Flare work with haXe)
Thanks!
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I've had some experience with Flare, and it's not bad. I know that Moritz http://well-formed-data.net/ has used it for several of his own projects.
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Since a while I'm following FlowingData and although I don't do much with visualization I do like the pictures :P and things that people can come up with.
However, I do use R for analyzing data. And this week a came across KNIME which could make some steps more efficient for me. Especially for processes that are used often in different kinds of data. So for those of you using R, this could come in handy.
Btw. I haven't put much time in KNIME but it does look promising. -
Out of curiousity, has anyone tried Python for interactive visualization? E.G. industrial production infographic based on a NYTimes recession visualization?
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