Category: InfoGraphics
Trending federal leaders in Google searches
Google’s Trend feature lets users track and compare the frequency of searches for particular words or phrases in any country, or worldwide. This chart compares searches within Canada for the full names (first and last) of the five leaders contesting the May 2 Federal Election.
I used Gilles Duceppe as the standard, so you could say Stephen Harper scored 12.6 duceppes; Jack Layton 7.8 duceppes; Michael Ignatieff 7.2 duceppes; and Elizabeth May 4.0 duseppes. (Sorry about the confusing colour assignments. Google picked ‘em.)
Tsunami debris heading our way
The University of Hawaii’s International Pacific Research Center has created an animated simulation of the predicted debris path from the March 11 tsunami in Japan. The image below is a screenshot. Click here for the animation.
H/T: Maptd mapping blog
Crowdsourced radiation map of Japan
The Internet has responded collaboratively to the lack of trust in official pronouncements about radiation levels in Japan. First, Shigeru Kobayashi aggregated geiger counter readings from around Japan. Then Haiyan Zhang, self-described interaction designer, technologist and maker of things, produced a Google maps mashup of Kobayashi’s data.
Click this image to view the actual interactive map.
Alexis Madrigal comments:
One of the key problems has been that people aren’t sure whether to trust the official measurements, no matter how many of them there are. Today, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci addressed the issue of lack of trust in institutions in her essay, “If We Built a Safer Nuclear Reactor, How Would We Know?”
I think I may have seen the beginnings of a way to build that trust in this crowdsourced map of Geiger counter readings from around Japan. It’s one thing to blindly trust the experts. It’s quite another to doublecheck them with a distributed network of 215 Geiger counters — forcing them to earn that trust.
This is DIY science with purpose.
Stunning satellite view before and after the tsunami
The New York Times has posted eight interactive satellite images of tsunami-ravaged cities in Japan. By moving the blue slider in the center of the image left and right, you can transition back and forth between the before and after images. (You can’t do that on the screenshot shown here, only by going to the NYT site.)
H/T: Richard Stephenson
This may be the perfect weather website
WeatherSpark, still in beta testing, seems to have everything: Past, present, and future Canadian data with customizable interactive fields for sun, clouds, precipitation, temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, and wind direction. Here’s a screenshot, but click through to the real McCoy. Very nice!
H/T Nathan Yeo.
Where’s the nearest cell tower?
Steve Nikkel’s interactive map will tell you:
As will his free iPhone app. Note that, in Nova Scotia, Telus uses Bell towers, and Rogers has frightfully poor coverage outside Metro. (This map could come in handy if you’re trying to grow organic garlic.)
H/T: Steve Manley
Art visualization: the Sistine Chapel
I’ve never been to Rome and never seen the Sistine Chapel. If you’re in the same boat, check out this interactive, 360-degree, wrap-around representation of the chapel interior produced for the Vatican last year by Villanova University. Pretty neat. (The image below is just a screenshot. Click here for the full 3D effect.)
H/T: Roland McCaffrey
Data visualization: plagiarism
German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, known in tabloid headlines as Baron Cut-and-Paste, resigned Tuesday following revelations that parts of his doctoral thesis had been cribbed without acknowledgement from the work of other writers. It wasn’t justa few lines, either. Gregor Aisch, who runs a German data visualization website, has produced a graphical depiction of zu Guttenberg’s borrowings.
[Larger version here.]
Dark red lines represent complete or masked plagiarism, while the lighter red depict other categories of plagiarism. Longer bars correspond to normal text, while smaller bars represent material in footnotes. Altogether brazen.
For the data underlying his image, Aisch drew on another liberating bit of computer-based technology, the German wiki site GuttenpPlag Wiki, where academics and citizens collaborated in tracking down and exposing the original sources pilfered by the defence minister. Too funny.
H/T: Nathan Yao
The planet’s water cycle animated
The NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio has released a very cool animation showing the Earth’s water cycle over 25 days, based on real data. (Click on the image below to view the animation).
NASA explains:
Water regulates climate, predominately storing heat during the day and releasing it at night. Water in the ocean and atmosphere carries heat from the tropics to the poles. The process by which water moves around the earth, from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land and back to the ocean, is called the water cycle.
Giving Watson a personality
If your supercomputer is going on jeopardy, how do you give it an interesting voice and an appealing face? That’s the problem that confronted the Automata Studio and technology artist Joshua Davis, hired by IMB to give Watson personality.
If you can’t see this video, try here.
H/T: Nathan Yau.
