THE KEYS IN THE DATA ANALYSIS
DATA
VISUALIZATION TOOLS 01 04
INTERVIEW
Rafael Höhr
CASE STUDY
‘Opportunity Project’
02 05
Telling what's going on through data INFOGRAPHY
Data visualization tools
INNOVATION TRENDS SERIES
03
10 data visualization tools
01/INTERVIEW Rafael Höhr: "Animation is necessary even though there is a higher risk of making a mistake" The attacks in Belgium on March 23 cut the interview short. Rafael Höhr had to begin interpreting the information from Brussels to create infographics for the website of the Spanish newspaper El País. An expert in infographics and a partner at Prodigioso Volcán, Höhr stresses how important data visualization is to be able to make sense out of today's information overload.
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Why is data visualization necessary? Data visualization makes it possible to understand the huge amount of information we have access to. lt's impossible for readers to reasonably process the amount of data to which we have access thanks to software, portals and information. We need to visualize this data, streamline it and shape it. And this can't be in text format; it needs to be in visual format.
What can infographics offer a bank? Banks handle huge amounts of data: economic, positioning, social and geographic. Correct visualization helps you
understand or effectively inform a work group of the result of a study or even view new fields within this data. Having to go through an endless Excel file is not the same as being able to play around with parameters to make decisions. Data visualization helps banks make decisions, view their environment, view what's really out there, understand what they have and, most importantly, uncover niches that have been overlooked. Visualization is also useful for customers since having banks move our money is no longer enough. Customers demand transparency and want to
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know what is being done with their money. Just like the banks, they need to make decisions which need to be based on real information.
Is animation information? Animation is mostly misinformation. Animation marks before and after; it already offers a process. If you make a mistake, you are misinformed. When you turn information into animated format, you are dealing with a delicate operation and, as such, there is a higher risk that you will make a mistake.
Rather than information, this is a necessity. Interactive infographics, animated infographics or object animation replace arrows on traditional printed media and in the traditional reading of cartoons and graphic novels. However, you need to be a lot more precise. You can get a street or number wrong... Time and space are information.
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Is it hard to close a visualization? To the extent that data keeps growing, any visualization will keep growing and parameters and interaction will even change. Interacting with 20 pieces of data is not the same as interacting with 2,000. When you create a user interface to interact with those 2,000 pieces, they have already increased to 4,000 and you need to change the parameters, segmentation and even the type of visualization. Is it better to work with little or a lot of data? It's the same. In the end, you need to summarize the original
data as little data. When you work with a lot of data, you need to be more precise in your final message. But the user is in charge. Users will not access all of this data because they don't have time and are bound to get bored. Since they don't have a lot of time, we need to provide them with perfectly processed data. It doesn't matter whether we have two or millions of pieces of data; we need to make it accessible to users.
What is the required professional profile? There is a lot of talk about "data journalists" who are basically people with certain statistical, mathematical and technological knowledge that know how to use the tools to search for and
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clean this data; they are masters at using Excel. But we need more than information processing; we need visualization. You need someone specialized in infographics who knows that type of graphics match a specific communication purpose, and what type of graphics is accessible since some of them can skew reality. You need someone with a profile and knowledge about graphics and statistics. And I would also say you need someone from usability. In a dynamic visualization on digital media someone needs to make everything work at the click of a button. And the data journalist needs to edit the final content.
What is the hardest part of your job? The hardest thing about visualization is not to lose track of your purpose. It is very easy to be influenced since there is a lot out there, you learn by copying and seeing other
people and watching trends. You normally use software that comes to you. Often you make things hard for yourself but it's really very simple: What does the user want? Where are they going to get it from? How do I explain
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this data volume to the user? And this is the hard part: Am I going to use three actions, three interactions, an animation...? This decision determines whether or not the message goes across to the user.
What are the sources used to visualize terrorist attacks, accidents...? First, we need to know where the tragedy took place. You look for the location and build the story from there. You need to restrain yourself when you go into the details of breaking news since you often need to be very precise in what you pick. Then you feed the information into the project (from the most basic to the most complex) until you get the right result. Technically speaking, google maps is the best and quickest option. We also use CartoDB for development purposes. We use ready-made templates and customize the tool to publish
the map online. Alternatively, you can use illustrator or design the map by hand and create a static map. There is a wide range of options.
the experimentation phase. It means that money is lost but I think that any technological advancement of this type will be used in the end.
Are videos or Virtual Reality going to be the end of infographics?
What visualization tools would you recommend?
No, they are complementary. We are working on how to insert infographics into Virtual Reality to explain certain things and add value to the content. We are exporting graphics within VR. For example, if you are "inside a video" watching the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the reactor's elements can be explained using an infographic.
Is it very expensive? Right now yes because we're in
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At the moment (and this will change) we have precise tools in Tableau which is very consistent, Carto DB for geolocation, Mapbox or Quadrigam which is a fun tool that is used by Bestiario. Datawrapper is very simple but is taking gigantic steps forward and I think it will become a purchase option for the media. It offers a lot of basic graphic possibilities and very simple maps.
In terms of media specialized in finance and economics, which ones do you think use visualization well? I like Financial Times a lot. They are creating very simple and small graphics which are perfect for cell phones, and their information is easy to
remember. As for general media, the New York Times is the best. The visual journalist Archie Tse works wonders. And Berliner Morgenpost is also very good.
Which infographic are you most proud of? The one about Caesarean sections for the World Health
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Organization. It's very thorough and you feel proud because you think it's going to be useful. It consists of small visualizations with classifications of Caesarean sections: their types and when they are performed. This is an infographic that can be used all over the world by different cultures.
And the strangest? There are many! Sometimes you realize that they are not asking for a graphic... Other times you start creating a graphic and realize it's not possible, that it's not the right medium for the story.
Do you think a lot about the device when you work? Yes. A graphic is conceived depending on which device will be used. You need to think of how it will be consumed. You don't need to distort the visualization but you need to adapt it to the user. Users don't
dedicate as much time to content on cell phones as they do on their computers.
What makes a graphic successful? It needs to be very simple. Text information means time: you receive, analyze and interpret content through text. Visual, graphical information is quick. It needs to be simple enough for there to be no obstacle between the user and them understanding the text. It must be simple but have some movement, a bit of a spark that draws your attention.
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Are users requesting more infographics? A lot more. And they are not accessing more graphical information because of the media. The entire technology environment is using this. When we access technology we are used to working with a user interface. Sometimes we need an explanation and sometimes we don't. In any case, instructions are graphical; rendering takes the shape of graphics; interactions with leisure elements (there are maps, routes and prices when you book a flight) or videogames are graphics. The more technology is used, the more graphics are a common sight. INNOVATION TRENDS SERIES 路 MARCH 2016 路 www.centrodeinnovacionbbva.com/en
02
Telling what's going on through data
Data visualization tools make it possible to interpret thousands of pieces of data for the user to perceive and process information. Data visualization can transform numerical data relationships into visual impacts and understanding the information. Today there are many useful tools to carry out the data visualization process.
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BBVA Research is one of the companies that uses Big Data to monitor geopolitical and social events. As highlighted: "The project of the global database of events, language and tone (GDELT) is an open global database of human society according to the world's media, which delves into the events, reactions and emotions of each part of the world in near real time. All this information is available for free to research, analyze, visualize and even predict human society according to global news coverage. It also includes a complete, high-resolution catalog of sociopolitical events
that are geo- referenced from 1979 to present”. The GDELT project keeps track of every printed and digital news report that is available worldwide every 15 minutes in over 100 languages. The information is processed using a variety of algorithms to identify hundreds of categories of events (from protests to calls for peace), thousands of emotions (from anxiety to happiness), millions of narrative themes (from women's rights to access to drinking water), as well as locations, individuals, organizations and other indicators.
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As explained in this Forbes article its cofounder, Kalev Leetaru (one of the fathers of GDETL) created a global-scale visualization map in 2011 to highlight how cities were connected through the news. Leetaru seeks to break the geographical frontiers of countries to create natural communities following the patterns of mentions of countries in the media. The map drawn is divided into 6 main groups which includes, for example, the ties between France and Portugal with African colonies, Spain with Latin America or the ties between Canada and the Middle East due to the discussion of their role in the Afghan conflict.
In 2012 he explored global geographic networks through the eyes of twitter and realized that cities are connected through retweets. Retweeted users not only reference users who are close to them but those who are on the other side of the planet. Proximity communication theories in a medium like Twitter does not make sense. As stated in this article in El Espectador, Leetaru devised the GDELT system that is able to translate global information in real time in two and a half months. His intention is to help the fight against terrorism. The GDELT automatically translates into English all the global news
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that it monitors in 65 languages, representing 98.4% of its volume of daily monitoring of news that is not in English. While machine translation is imperfect, according to the author this is a way to at least identify the events, people, organizations and other circumstances related to violent extremism elsewhere. Unlike the Pentagon's efforts, "the GDELT can operate on world languages in real time, instead of being limited to a
small group of Western news agencies in English to understand events taking place in some remote corner of the world," Leetaru said. With this initiative of mass translation, at least the US may depend less and less on its own news agencies to track down its enemy, terrorism, and expand the areas in which it can monitor it. However, for Leetaru only archiving the information is not enough; it must be analyzed. He has
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therefore also driven systems to display in the map patterns of socio-cultural issues or those related to human rights, which could lead to a better understanding of certain groups, ethnicities, religions in certain regions; or display on the world map areas of the greatest violations of Human Rights, once multiple reports by international organizations that defend these rights are indexed.
03
10 data visualization tools Having good information and reliable data is only the first step to achieving a presentation or story that attracts your audience's attention. There are several online tools available today that enable us to visualize data more clearly and effectively than if we content ourselves with presenting them in a traditional way. Although each tool has its own features, they generally work by importing the data, choosing the visualization options and then publishing it. Today we're assured that all the best-known tools can be used without any knowledge of programming and that the graphics they produce
are already optimized for mobile devices and can be shared instantly on the social networks. They also offer free versions and user communities to share tips and good practices for their use. Here are some of the recommended tools for data visualization:
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Tableau This is one of the most popular free tools for visualizing data interactively. The graphs it creates are optimized to be viewed and to work well in cellphones, tablets and computers. Its website includes video tutorials and live sessions with Tableau experts to teach you to use the tool.
https://youtu.be/Z5kQR71yJpE
Datawrapper Very popular and easy to use for interactive and responsive visualizations. It offers everything from classic bar charts, tables and maps through to more complex visualizations. It also allows you to customize the colors, fonts and other graphic elements to
adapt the graph's appearance to the website where you plan to insert. https://youtu.be/Ni8PmmC2IWs
Infogram This is one of the most widely used by the media and educational sites. It has a selection of templates, icons and other elements that serve as support for the graphs, in which you can also insert images and videos. https://youtu.be/oO2injQpF_A
Piktochart The service specializes in the creation of infographs. It has a wide range of over 4,000 templates and elements for creating graphics, and a very
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attractive system of choosing and dragging elements to the templates. The photographs are ready for interactive presentation or to be downloaded in high resolution in .jpg, .png or PDF formats. https://youtu.be/SzI9RzvnwZA
Google This is an experimental app from Google. Its interface may not be the most attractive, but it's very powerful, as it is intended to handle colossal amounts of data. It also allows you to work collaboratively through Google Drive and visualize the data in Google Maps. https://youtu.be/p0xnk9zFQpY
Chartblocks Chartblocks specializes in creating graphics that are ready to share, in a simple way. It has an "Assistant" feature to select the most suitable data for each graph. The visualizations it creates are optimized in high quality for all screens and for high-res printing.
https://youtu.be/1HPm8flGb5w ?list=PLHqEISQBSsC60RxfR4zODLvFn4XMnw Oo
Thinglink Thinglink Thinglink is an interactive photo tool. It allows you to include all types of elements on a background image –such as videos, audio, text and links to other sites– to enrich and complement the information shown in the photo while you hover over it. https://youtu.be/pChlenkNWos
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Google Maps
Dipity Dipity
Canva
The tool we all use to find where we are also allows us to create our own maps with geolocalized information. Its many uses such as locating places of interest for particular themes, creating sightseeing routes or telling journalistic stories by pinpointing the geographic places being mentioned.
Dipity is a tool for creating timelines. Its interface works well and is easy to use. It offers several visualizations for a timeline and can include links to expand the information included in it.
This is a very attractive platform with hundreds of graphic designs to create presentations. It includes an image bank, filters for photos, textures, effects, icons and fonts. It has an intuitive interface and is very focused on attractive design.
https://youtu.be/huayzb-0NGs
https://youtu.be/V8jbtv2pegg https://youtu.be/a3fnrjq_R4M
04
"Opportunity Project": The White House shares thousands of pieces of data The Obama administration wants government data to be available to developers to build technological tools that improve the relationship between cities and their citizens. The White House has a lot of outdated data hosted in inaccessible file systems. For this reason, the Obama administration has decided to create Opportunity Project, based on civilian technology tools, which makes that large volume of data accessible.
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Earlier this year the White House, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development met with several developers. The reason for this meeting was to facilitate the construction of digital tools that will enable all citizens to access information, allowing them to improve their quality of life. This project came to light on Monday March 7 and contains all kinds of data, from those related to crime, extra curricular activities to those related to job vacancies.
It was Obama who came up with the idea of launching a project of this magnitude. During his two terms he has worked to modernize the government and increase investment in technology to simplify bureaucratic processes. DJ Patil, U.S. Chief Data Scientist, said that the President is focused on achieving that information benefits all people. And what really matters to Obama is the impact that technology has on each individual.
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Some local governments cannot afford the investment needed to have more accessible data. Therefore, the intention of Opportunity Project is for developers to generate tools that allow access to information for citizens to make decisions more easily.
The website has 12 tools which, from an application, for example help families find a home near a good school, or allow them to compare areas to show the inequality in the country.
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The site also shows some citizens who have used these types of civic technology tools. You can see the case of a family that has had to move and has used these tools to find a home that meets their needs.
05/INFOGRAPHIC Data visualization tools Data visualization turns numerical data into visual representations so that information can be understood. Nowadays, there are countless useful data visualization tools.
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Languages and tools XML
pandas
SQL
SQLite
mxODBC
RSQlite
pyODBC
json
Toad
RJDBC
Tora RapidMiner
RODBC
Data.table
Pentaho
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Knime
Data sources Facebook process
More than
350GB
100 millions
of data
of data Twitter users send
100% 92%
277.000
571
72 hours
Sprint processes
0f new
250.000
news websites
tweets
1 minute
More than
2 million
Youtube videos
Google searches
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calls Walmart processes
17.000
transactions
How it work Information not only needs to be managed, it needs to be managed in a secure and quick manner. This gives fast and effective access to information to customers, collaborators and employees.
Analytics
Storage
Analytical applications
Application data
Transactions Business applications
Device data Social media
Cloud-based Applications
Management INNOVATION TRENDS SERIES 路 MARCH 2016 路 www.centrodeinnovacionbbva.com/en
Content
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