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Common Concepts to Look at When Comparing Multiple Data Visualization Tools Common Concepts to Look at When Comparing Multiple Data Visualization Tools
28 February 2012 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
Ideally, data visualization is a balanced presentation of function and aesthetics with the goal of intuitively relaying a complex idea. It is this balance that often increases effectiveness because the scheme presented is neither too bland, in a bid to increase functionality, nor too flashy to appeal to the user. How well we achieve this balance is based on [...]
The future of data visualization- what do you think will be at the forefront?
28 February 2012 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
Data visualization to simplify or data visualization to overload? This picture has been taken from Smashing Magazine’s website. While data visualization existed in some form since antiquity, the world of computer science and social networking has created a greater need than ever for infographics. That being said, people may lack the software that is necessary [...]
Make The World a Better Place with Proper Presentations
7 December 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
One of the questions we often get at Piktochart: What if your users created really dull infographics, or worse, explode the entire infographic with colourful graphics and a terrible mismatch of colours/designs and lo & behold, They Do Not Even Have Any Quality Data. That to us, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of a [...]
Colours in Telling a story
2 October 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
3 Ground Rules to Start with: This rule may appeal less to a pictographic piece of information. No more than 6 colors Use cultural conventions e.g. anger = danger Beware of bad interactions (red/blue etc.) There are 3 safe ways to pick your colour scheme in creating a data visualization. Similar colours (a.k.a. analogous [...]
Variables in Visual Encoding
2 October 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
Jock Mackinlay was born in Nuremberg, Germany and received his BA in Mathematics and Computer Science from UC Berkeley in 1975 and his PhD in computer science fromStanford University in 1986, where he pioneered the automatic design of graphical presentations of relational information. Wait, what has he got to do with visual encoding and how we see information? Mackinlay invented several methods of [...]
Uni, Bi or Tri-Variate
2 October 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
On Piktochart, the Chart Wizard helps you to select the method of data visualization which you could use for your data set. This is a little insight to how Wizard does that: Data is usually commonly shown in the 3 formats below: Univariate – x only (contains only one axis of information) Bivariate – x [...]
Why Visualize Data?
2 October 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
We are living in the age where data is huge. We can now monitor everything and establish connections (or just correlations between events). With so much going on, we have to find the best way to communicate all these information. Data visualization the following: Conveys: Persuades people about something Collaborates: Presents an interesting/thought provoking argument [...]
6 Useful Databases to Dig for Data (and 100 more)
4 August 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
In your presentation, quoting from Wikipedia might not always be the best (unless they are linked to reputable papers and sources). Here are 6 major databases (some are crowd-sourced so they are by organisations and individuals) and we have about 100+ links which can be very useful. 1. Freebase Freebase is an open platform for [...]
Scraping Data from a Table in a HTML Page via Google Docs
21 July 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
This is a pretty neat tutorial we found at EagerEyes’ blog. It allows you to scrap data from a table in a HTML page and get all of that data via Google Docs, which is a spreadsheet that more and more are becoming accustomed to. 1. Create a new spreadsheet on GDocs and enter the [...]
5 Excellent Resources to View/Create Visualisations
21 July 2011 | Pikto | Data Collection & Research
There are several places we go to for inspiration in terms of getting data visualizations done right. Among them are the 5 resources below. It is not just important to select the right types of visualizations for the data, but also get the colours, spacing, font, hue/opacity/saturation right! P/S: There are full degrees in graphic [...]
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