“The Future of Data Visualization” Jeffrey Heer

Today in my adventures on the internet I stumbled upon a treasure trove of data visualization information. Below are links to an amazing video talking about “The Future of Data Visualization” by Jeffrey Heer which in itself is a comment about the past, present, and future use of visuals. The conclusion that the speaker comes to is that there are visualizations that are objectively easier to perceive, than others. As an aside, the speaker uses data to show how its best to show data, Meta!.

The analysis shows that position and length are simpler than to analyze than area and color hue. This has dramatic implications when creating visuals. At the end of his talk, the speaker mentions that his company Trifecta suggests what form a visual should take in order for the analyst to quickly understand the implications of the data.

One other note is that the speaker talks about his class that he teaches as he gives an example. A little internet sleuthing and knowing that UW doesn’t put lectures behind a log-in barrier led me to his course website. It has over 1000 slides of amazing data visualization content. The link to the course and its materials is also listed below.

Video: “The Future of Data Visualization” – Jeffrey Heer

Course: UW CSE 512 – Data Visualization

Lectures: CSE 512

(Also take a look at anything from Strata + Hadoop, the entire conference is on Youtube)