DM Review Magazine publishes the winner (and first runner up) of their dataviz competition. The winning submission was Tableau Software's visualization of the "advertising strategies of video game companies."
This analysis involves the simultaneous visualization of five variables: 1) video game brand, 2) time the ad ran, 3) ad length (15, 30 or 60 seconds), 4) type of television broadcast (network, cable or satellite) and 5) ad cost ($0 to $200,000). Each of these variables was encoded in a different manner, consisting of the following visual attributes: 1) vertical 2-D location, 2) horizontal 2-D location, 3) symbol shape, 4) color and 5) symbol size. The size of an object usually doesn't display quantitative values effectively because it is difficult to compare their 2-D areas to one another with any degree of accuracy. However, in this case, precise comparisons of ad costs weren't necessary, only a rough sense of relative size. Visualized in this way, the insight that Jock reports in his description jumps out quite clearly. You don't have to be a genius or have a degree in statistics to make sense of this visualization. Despite the concurrent presentation of five variables, this solution is simple and clear - it communicates! Chances are you would have difficulty visualizing multivariate data in this way unless you have Tableau's software.
[via information aesthetics]
Posted by johndanseven at October 10, 2005 08:48 PM