6: Recommended Reading/Viewing
You can download the slides from Geoff McGhee’s presentation “Getting Started with Data Visualization” here.
For stimulating conversation about what data visualizations work and which don’t, take a look at such lively blogs as Information Aesthetics, Flowing Data and Visual Complexity.
Manuel Lima, editor of Visual Complexity, published a manifesto on information visualization that attracted comments from some of the master practitioners of the craft.
The blog DataVis offers valuable resources for concepts and tools for visualization:
Practical steps for improving visualisation
A brief review of online visualisation tools that can help
Smashing Magazine has produced some good roundups of visualization genres and techniques:
Modern approaches to data visualization
Inspiring data visualizations and infographics
Web Designer Depot has more examples here.
Additional Info on Network Analysis Software and Services
International Network for Social Network Analysis: http://www.insna.org/ (list of software)
R: (http://www.r-project.org/) For advanced users, R is free, open source, and it is a programming language, which makes it more pliant but also increases the steepness of the learning curve.
UCINET is a low cost (~$30) social network analysis program that works in tandem with freeware program called NETDRAW for visualizing networks. It is relatively easy to use and has good user manual data.
NodelXL is a useful tool for visualizing network graphs quickly and easily. It is an Excel plug-in developed by Microsoft engineers.
Pajek is another tool for visualizing network data. It offers more functionality than some
programs, but support and documentation suffer from translation issues (the product was developed in Slovenia).
5: Visualizations and Accountability