Data Visualisation Catalogue

Data Viz Catalogue

Here's an interesting blog that categorises all the various types of data visualisations by their type and purpose. There's nothing worse than seeing visualisations that don't convey the right message about their data or confuse the user. I think this catalogue will be very useful for anyone looking to tell a story or get a point across. The more that data visualisations get used in business and social environments, it's important to understand what's going on underneath rather than just on the surface.

Speaking of proper visuals, this reminds me of the work by Jon Schwabisch over at Policy Viz. His blog focuses on data visualisation in the government space but he did launch a Remakes page some time ago. Basically people send in visuals they see in the news or media that have some flaw in them and Jon goes about remaking them to better get the messages across. Try it here.

Very interesting concepts and certainly things that I'll use in my every day work and you should too.

IBM Watson - the future is here

Hi folks, I've recently had some time away from data mining work (analysing statistical datasets and figuring out what's going on in terms of production and capacity in various economies overseas) and had a chance to investigate more cutting edge technology from around the web.

Not sure if people remember Watson, the $3m IBM machine that was built to 'think' like a human - cognitive reasoning and unrivalled processing capacity all trapped inside a box...

It's also the brains behind the Big Blue IBM machine that beat Kasparov at chess. If you don't know Kasparov, I'd suggest you google him.

In any case, this level of computing was something at the time, far out of the reach of many organisations large and small. However a tide is shifting and with further developments in cloud computing and more and more information available online, the time was right for Watson to get amongst it. 

What's on offer is a distributive type of service where IBM is looking for apps/projects to get involved in and as much as I may have been against the might of software giants fighting against the little guys, I'm not against it when they do so in such as  a way as to move away from traditional norms of expensive software, long build cycles and limited access.

IBM has already started recruiting companies to take part in their 

Built in the background of all this are certain API components that give rise to the level of smarts you see above.

Some such as Trade-Off Analytics give users quick ability to analyse static datasets 

http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercloud/services-catalog.html

Or how about this demo which makes conversational computing a reality like in this healthcare example - https://watsonhealthqa.mybluemix.net/

Traditionally, any kind of querying of data has involved either visually looking at data as a table or as a chart or digging into it manually.  Improvements have been made over time to codify and further automate the process however the process for users has always been about knowing how to use certain systems. These systems have been getting easier and easier to use but what better way to do this than what Watson is doing.

In the above example, I can search as if I am asking a question....  eg 'what are the causes of the common cold?', or 'how do I know if I have food poisoning?'

Watson reviews what you've typed based on speech software and then looks into it's vast database to find answers and not only that, it also gives a level of confidence to those answers as well.

It's been a while since I'd heard of Watson but I'm glad they're making a comeback and doing so in a manner that is more reachable than anything IBM-like I thought would ever be.

Stay tuned for more updates as I investigate this further, could useful in what I or many others involved in the analytics space do going forward.

Big Data time

Been a while since my last post I know however I'm going to slowly get back into this. My recent venture back into the world of finance has given me much time to experience the highs and lows of what data can do to help improve the way we live, work and even play. There's a great video from TED recently about big data and the way it can help everyday citizens come up with solutions to what would otherwise have been very much ignored problems. Data and making it easy to access, use and understand leads to better story telling capabilities and whether it be for civic duties or for monetary purposes there is much that can be done to find these advantages. Anyway, check out this video from Ben Wellington - and maybe even check out your local open data website or statistic agency. There's information out there that can help you - you've just got to do a bit of digging.