Data Visualization Aggregator
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
“The project’s main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as biology, social networks or the World Wide Web.” A site with many neat data visualizations.
A Visualization
http://www.upworthy.com/heres-a-fact-about-sharks-and-humans-thatll-stay-with-you-every-hour-on-the-hour-today
Sharks don’t kill people; people kill sharks. () Upworthy’s not usually my favourite, but I came across this on the Facebook page of a shark loving friend, and unsustainable fishing is bad. Also, this one on other fish we eat but shouldn’t. http://infobeautiful3.s3.amazonaws.com/2013/01/1276_Which_Fish_2013.png
Artist/Designer
http://alignedleft.com/
Scott Murray. A self declared “code artist,” specializing in data visualization, generative art and designed experiences with the goal of getting people to slow and down and take a closer look at things.
Visualization Tool
https://github.com/jagracar/grafica
The grafica library for Processing. Helps create 2D plots/graphs. Includes features that allow you to zoom/pan around your visualization (“make your data move!”), and add/display labels with ease.
Data Collection Tool
http://vis.stanford.edu/wrangler/
Wrangler, from Stanford U. Puts your un-charted data into tables for you, but you’ll probably learn more if you do do it yourself..
Or really anything else from this lovely list by ComputerWorld: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215504/22_free_tools_for_data_visualization_and_analysis
Discussion Forum
http://www.reddit.com/r/visualization/
Reddit’s r/visualization. Discussions on coding visualizations, mostly. Additionally r/dataisbeautiful has more examples and is generally prettier, but r/visualization is more helpful. r/learnprogramming could be handy as well.
Criticism
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jul/24/why-you-should-never-trust-a-data-visualisation
An article that speaks against trusting data visualization at all, claiming it’s biased to the creator. The author claims that things like this http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-countries/ are widely accepted as objective fact, and how that’s a problem. Pretty much a less funny version of the house hippo argument (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBfi8OEz0rA).
Data Source
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/surveys.htm
Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Has many surveys/data sets related to health and diseases. Not the clearest site and/or data sets, but there’s a bunch of stuff on here if the topics interest.
https://explore.data.gov/ethics/
Or the US Govenrment data site. Search anything. I searched “POTUS” and got a list of White House visitor records. Select viewtype>datasets.
Data Ethics
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/424104/what-big-data-needs-a-code-of-ethical-practices/
What Big Data Needs: A Code of Ethical Practices. The author writes about how everything can be/is tracked in our lives both on and offline. And this was two years before the whole Snowden thing.
A Book
http://http://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Infographics-2013/dp/0547973373/
Best American Infographics 2013. Technically infographics, clearly, but some of them fall into the data vis category. Can be found at The Strand for $17.95 (or Amazon $6 less plus all the fun carbon emissions, etc. from shipping it directly to your door). Some very pretty visualizations on a variety of topics.