Data Viz

BuzzFeed News science and health writer Peter Aldhous teaches a data visualization course at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Before I graduate in two short weeks I wanted to highlight some of the work coming out of the J-school. I caught up with Aldhous about the projects created in his class last semester. He said once students find their data sets it's time to figure out the best way to present the info. He's all about showing numbers and graphs the way our brains process info and what cues us up properly. As a visual journalist he said, "I like [data viz] that does one job and does it well."

Viz Wizzes

• Aldhous was clear everyone created cool projects to show everything from burglaries to movie ratings to Oakland public school academics. A few highlighted projects included one by Jieqian Zhang showing car break-ins in SF with location data plugged in by the user and a gauge showing the rate of break-ins compared to the city average for your specific location.
• Jeremy Lin is a true data viz wiz kid. His project about arms embargoes is in D3, and you can easily scroll through the experience. It looks like something from the New York Times, which is no surprise since Jeremy went on to intern at their graphics department. 
• Last but not least Ted Andersen charted American deaths abroad. He used Tableau to let users plug in different parameters, such as cause of death, country and year. Brett Murphy also used Tableau in a similar way to show growth in the shipping industry, but with fewer pull-downs and more clicking or hovering directly on the graphics.