Data Visualization Without Computers
September 17, 2009
Vintage Infographics From the 1930s, Flowing Data (Sept. 11, 2009). Some examples from Willard Cope Brinton’s 1939 book Graphic Presentation. jim
ICPSR's Myron Gutmann to head NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate
July 28, 2009
U-M’s Gutmann to head NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate, University of Michigan News Service, July 27, 2009. Gutmann, who specializes in historical demography and population-environment relationships, currently directs the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). He begins his NSF position Nov. 2. Jim Jacobs
After the hype: Behind the Scenes of the Wolfram Alpha Search Engine
July 27, 2009
There was a lot of hype when the new search engine WolframAlpha was launched earlier this year. An article in the current issue of Technology Review does a better job of explaining how it works and how it fits in with other search engines. It notes that the numeric information it uses is “curated” by Wolfram|Alpha employees – by which they mean the data are selected and acquired, not just contributed as with sites like Swivel.
Historical data analysis
June 21, 2009
Check out this week’s Fifth Wave cartoon: http://www.gocomics.com/thefifthwave/2009/06/21
Conference webcasts and presentations online!
June 9, 2009
A week has passed since IASSIST 2009. I hope most of you have made it safely back home by now - and are ready to refresh the memories by watching the conference webcasts and viewing presentations. Webcasts of all three plenaries and Thursday and Friday’s concurrent sessions in the Small Auditorium are now available. We didn’t have cameras available during the Wednesday sessions, so no videos of these presentations, sorry! But most of the presentations are already online - a few are still missing either because we didn’t have them or we are waiting for an updated version.
ICPSR Summer Program course on DDI
June 9, 2009
As you may have heard during last week’s wonderful IASSIST meeting in Tampere, there are still spaces available in the ICPSR Summer Program course on DDI, to be held at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, on July 13-16. The course is titled “Documenting Data Using DDI 3.0: Supporting Research, Collection Management, and Access,” and instructors are Wendy Thomas (Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota) and Arofan Gregory (Open Data Foundation).
Special IQ: Moving Research Data Into and Out of Institutional Repositories
May 12, 2009
The IASSIST Quarterly IQ Vol. 31 issue 3&4 is now available on the web: http://iassistdata.org/publications/iq/iqvol31.html This issue will only be available on the web. There will be no printed version mailed out to the membership. This double issue is the work of the authors and their articles are introduced below. We are presenting an integrated double issue of high quality. We should also give a special thanks to the editors of the issue.
Google Launches Data Visualization Service
May 5, 2009
Several weeks ago, Google contacted me at BLS to let us know they were using some of our data in a launch of a new service in data visualization. Their plan is to make as much data available as possible with as rich a tool set as they can provide. To see an example, enter the phrase “US Unemployment Rate” in the Google search box. The top link sends you to a page that allows you to superimpose historical graphs of unemployment rates down to any county in the US.
New IQ!
March 26, 2009
The IASSIST Quarterly (IQ Vol. 31 issue 2 - 2007) is now available on the web: http://iassistdata.org/publications/iq/iqvol31.html This issue will be printed and mailed to the membership. From next issue IASSIST will be saving trees and only publish the IQ on the web. We hope you agree with our decision. Thanks. Some of you are now getting ready for the IASSIST conference in Tampere, Finland 26.-29. of May. Remember if you are giving presentations that you could write the presentation as an article for the IQ.
IASSIST 2009 Tweets!
March 3, 2009
We’ve created a Twitter feed for conference info, updates and impressions. See it at http://twitter.com/IASSIST2009 or there’s a link on the program page. Before the conference, it will be mostly logistic and planning information. At the conference, IASSISTers will be tweeting about the conference itself: comments, suggestions, updates, and other twitter-friendly information. We’ve got a few volunteer tweeters but more are always welcome. If you are interested in tweeting from the conference, contact Tuomas Alatera who will set you up with a HootSuite account so you can help us Twitter.