jill of all tirades

I recently came across a website called Flowing Data, check it out when you have time.  I first saw the visualization of the growth of Walmart.  If you watch the video, it looks like a bioterrorism attack that was orgininated in Arkansas.  It actually looks rather scary.  After that video became popular, a growth of Target video was created.  The Target video does not look like a plague crossing the nation; hence, it is less exciting.  I found it interesting that California had a huge number of Target dots and fewer Walmart, and conversely Arkansas had many Walmart but few Target.  Everywhere else on the map seemed to have a mixture of the two.  Is it just CA and AK that have extreme loyalty to the store that they shop at?

Now that I have put that picture up, I will tell you what it is!  It is a word cloud . . . ta-dah!  If you click on the picture, it will take you to the full sized one, and the site that makes them.  I used a term paper that I wrote on malaria vaccine development for this cloud.  You can choose the color scheme, the fonts, and the general shape and direction of the words.  Neat, huh?

I think that this is a very cool way to visualize data.  I first saw this method in National Geographic Magazine; an article showing which authors have been translated to and from English the most.  If you get a chance to pick up an issue and check it out, notice how big J. K. Rowling is compared to some of the “classic” authors.  It suggests that the Harry Potter series will soon become a “classic” to be read in schools.