CNN were the 1st network to use the Perceptive Pixel touchscreens to visualize data for the elections last year.  I just saw they have a new article on data visualization on their site.  They call it “the new way of looking at the world”.  The article discusses the new tools that are making it easier to see and analyze complex data.  It claims that cheaper technology and the availability of digital data are the main drivers of innovation in the space.  It also mentions the power of data visualization on mobile devices.  The article has the following examples, many of which we have discussed on thedoublethink :

Ben Fry 

Everyblock 

IBM’s Many Eyes 

Yelp’s Monocle

Citysense

Flowing Data

Data visualization is a fascinating and now apparently even newsworthy field.  It can give people access to data in an intuitive and user friendly way.  Some data visualizations can also be incredibly beautiful (like the visualization of the port traffic I described in a previous post).  It can also be extremely helpful when one needs to communicate insights derived from data to a non technical audience. 

One promise however I haven’t really seen it fulfill is the discovery of insights that could not have been found with traditional multivariate statistical techniques.  Though I agree it can help statisticians communicate their insights, I dont think it really helps them discover them.  On the other hand it does provide a much broader audience than just statisticians with data analytics tools.  This is probably the biggest potential for data visualization.  Having people with vastly different backgrounds mine data will almost definitely produce more and richer insights.