Visualizing Data: Part Two
Video: Motion Chart
Tutorial Explanations
Motion Chart: Formatting Data
- For a tools like Tableau and Motion Charts, in which you might want to visualize differences over time, one record (row) for any given unit of analysis needs to be a devoted to the variable associated with a single year. In practice, this means you'll need to format your data so that your columns are: unit identifier (e.g. Name, Country, etc), a single year (or more specific dates may be acceptable depending on the tool), and then all the variable values for that unit for that year.
- For more information on formatting data, see Part One.
Motion Chart: Importing Data
- Motion Chart runs in the GoogleDocs cloud document editor. To import and Excel spreadsheet, click the 'Upload...' link from the main page in your GoogleDocs account or create a spreadsheet and choose 'Import...' from 'File' in the menu bar (and choose 'Replace Spreadsheet' after locating your spreadsheet file.
- Once the data is imported or uploaded, confirm the formatting is still correct and that no fields are missing or corrupted. Also confirm that the date entry is still the second column. Columns can be dragged if you need to rearrange the order.
Motion Chart: Creating Your Visualization
- Although a Motion Chart allows users to set their own axes and marks from within the chart itself, the original layout of the spreadsheet depicts the "standard" fields of the chart. The third column (immediately following the date) is automatically mapped to the X-axis, the fourth to the Y-axis, the fifth column determines the colors (gradient scale for continuous variables or unique colors for categorical ones), and the sixth determines the sizes of the marks. Adjust your spreadsheet accordingly if you have a specific relationship you want to present.
- To create the Motion Chart itself, highlight all columns and choose 'Insert' from the menu bar and select 'Charts...'. Choose 'Motion Chart' and fill in any optional information you desire. Then choose 'Apply & Close'.
Motion Chart: Configuring Your Visualization
- After creating it you can configure your Motion Chart to map different variables. Do so by choosing the variable title listed for each metric (Axis, Color, Size) to gain access to a drop-down menu offering other variables.
- If you're interested in monitoring relationships across time, the Motion Chart creates more flexible data visualizations than Tableau because it allows for examinations of any variables included. Tableau can specialize the visualizations more and can provide deeper insight into a single (or multiple controlled) relationship than can Motion Chart.
- You can also change the scale of the axes to logarithmic instead of linear length to better note change relationships between exponentially different variables.
Common Visualization Task: Explore Your Visualization
- This is less tutorial than advice, but be creative with using your Motion Chart and your Tableau visualizations. Try variable combinations you aren't particularly interested in.
- The purpose of visualization tools is to enhance cognition by allowing the brain to share some of the processes required to look for relationships between the cognitive and perceptive areas of the brain. Ultimately, it's about making it easier to think about the data so you can think about it faster and more deeply in more different ways.
- Tools like Tableau and Motion Chart play to particular strengths in information visualization.
- Tableau makes it easier for perception to participate in deep relationships by exploring more patterns between certain variables.
- Motion Chart enhances the speed at which you can use a visualization to explore variable relationships by giving you a simple interface that will map any two variables you want and transition the changes in those relationships across time.
- A good visualization raises more questions. Use many visualization tools in different combinations to explore the questions each gives you. This tutorial focused on Tableau first because it involved more, but a researcher would probably benefit by first importing his data (after formatting it properly) into a Motion Chart and there exploring many different relationships looking for patterns indicative of interesting data stories. He'd then want to mark down all the more-promising relationships and explore them further using Tableau's powerful visualization tools. These deeper explorations would invariably raise new questions that our researcher can again explore, using again Motion Chart or Tableau as is appropriate for the narrow-ness of the question.
Back to Final Project | Tutorial Pages: Part One