Out of all the case studies I really liked the Crowdsourcing the Price of Water. The data visualization takes information from Franciscan resident’s water bill, which can be scanned and verified, and throws it on an interactive site. The site allowed people to see show much others were paying for tap water and lead to a lot of reform in France’s corporate run water market.
I really liked this case study because it was easy to use and view by the user, it gives the user something personal to do and it let to real reform and transparency. Visualizing data is great and all, but it takes real meaning when the visualization leads to real change. Also, water transparency and water corporations are hot topics for me since it is a constant talking point at my newspaper and the cities I cover. To see something like this be created, and know that it is something my readers could potentially use, is exciting.
I really like sports visualizations, so this one from The New York Times fits the bill. It tracks what countries have won how many medals at each Olympic Games from 1986-2008. The program makes the size of the country’s circle change based on the amount of medals they won each year. It also places the circles where the country is geographically located so you can see how neighboring countries faired. When I first saw this it started raising questions, such as why did one country have a harder time than another? Is it right that only the global power houses gained the most medals, or is that a coincidence? The best data visualizations generate more questions and lead to more stories.
I also really like the interactives and data visualizations the Dallas Morning News creates. This one shows a pie chart of Dallas if the city was only 100 people. I love it because it touches on so many topics such as education, income, commuting and so on. They made it simple to understand and encompassed a lot of information. I also started thinking of questions/stories from this visualization of data, which in my book is the parameter for a good project.