Let’s Get Visual. Visual.

All sorts of companies, including agencies like R\West, use data visualizations to tell stories from numbers. Understanding trends, correlations, outliers, and other behaviors within data sets is tricky if you’re just looking at a spreadsheet or database. Here are a few inspiring, thought-provoking, and quirky examples of data visualization.

Physical mapping

Finding the shortest path to visit all 48 capitols in the Continental United States

Plotting millions of journal entries from ship logs from 1700-1900 to reveal trade routes

Animating work versus home behavior flow in Manhattan

Overlaying histograms of world population by latitude and longitude

Comparing human routes and dog routes while hiking

http://imgur.com/a/R8L9h

Planning for terraforming on the Moon and Mars

http://vizual-statistix.tumblr.com/post/110268185576/terraforming-other-planets-is-a-common-theme-of

Suggesting it’s not always about the shortest route

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniele_quercia_happy_maps

Going West, young man (and woman)

Mapping US history

Human behavior

Giving high school students a little boost

http://imgur.com/4nnbyru

Naming US-born male babies (Raj, Rajiv, and Faruq aren’t as popular here)

Finding out what’s most likely to kill you, depending on your age

Learning everything you wanted to know about pooping, and then some

http://imgur.com/a/kTx7r

Comparing dating texts to married texts

http://adashofdata.com/2014/10/14/how-text-messages-change-from-dating-to-marriage/?utm_content=buffer80867&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Sup, bro? Yo, dude!

http://qz.com/316906/the-dude-map-how-american-men-refer-to-their-bros/

Measuring cumulative damage caused by Calvin

Shearing a wealth of data about facial hair (this needs to be updated)

Visualizing hand value in Texas Hold’em Poker

http://chrisbeaumont.org/holdem_odds/#8H+QS

Searching for, and finding, Waldo

http://www.randalolson.com/2015/02/03/heres-waldo-computing-the-optimal-search-strategy-for-finding-waldo/

Beating heart beating hard during a marriage proposal

Understanding correlation and causation

Visualizations of data correlations that tell us absolutely nothing about causations

http://www.tylervigen.com/

Written by: Alex Head