Thursday, March 26, 2009

The Art of InfoVis Presentation …

I recently stumbled over the “Synoptic” project. It is a nice animated visualization of weather data - not particularly unique, but aesthetically well done.

I don’t have to argue about the lack of any generality regarding data analysis tasks here …

What caught my attention is the overall “staging” of the presentation. When you compare the “Synoptic” page with the (somewhat famous) demo movie of prefuse, you will pretty soon understand what I mean.

As a statistician - who grew up in an academic environment built up by math people - I can at least learn the marketing lessons here …

(Make sure to have your sound turned on, otherwise you will miss the point)
Posted by Martin at 18:42:42 | Permalink | Comments (1) »

Monday, March 16, 2009

Data for the “Car Trashing Bonus”

Here is the data for the so called “Umweltprämie”

21995    9.2.2009
34210    10.2.2009
39856    11.2.2009
41619    12.2.2009
44161    13.2.2009
60730    16.2.2009
62806    17.2.2009
76926    18.2.2009
85304    19.2.2009
94691    20.2.2009
104840    23.2.2009

120016    25.2.2009

139964    27.2.2009
150722    2.3.2009
157696    3.3.2009
166238    4.3.2009
180492    5.3.2009
188421    6.3.2009
201469    9.3.2009
217693    10.3.2009
225870    11.3.2009
231533    12.3.2009
241280    13.3.2009

246853    16.3.2009

Using the trivial linear least square fit will now yield the 7th of May. 
There is still no real hint to anything different than a more or less linear increase, but the last point may be the first indicator for a saturation - how may cars are out there, willing to be trashed …?
Posted by Martin at 18:30:38 | Permalink | Comments (1) »